Dredging Up the Past
by Kenwoody
Summary: In the face of trauma, people react in many different ways. Some become tough, some become mean, some become isolated, some go insane, many lose themselves. Then there are those rare few who saw the worst of humanity, and all it did was make them kind.
1. What Made Them Such Good Cops

**So I haven't written fanfiction in years, but then I got an inspiration for one of my favorite shows ever, and I just started typing. I've got a ton of chapters already done, but I need feedback. I've never written Castle before. I'm saying right now that it won't be a slash, so if that's what you're expecting then I'm sorry to dissapoint. I don't have anything against slash fics, but I prefer other pairings. I'm going to have bits and pieces of Castle/Beckett, Lanie/Esposito, and Ryan/Jenny. **

**I need feedback if I'm to continue. I'll give you the first few chapters, but then you're on your own.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Castle. If only if only (the woodpecker sighs...)**

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**Chapter One: What Made Them Such Good Cops**

Detective Kevin Ryan was a fairly mellow guy, very go-with-the-flow, wasn't angered easily, and he tried not to let the little things bother him. Overall, there was mainly one thing that could make him lose his cool, and that was the people he cared about.

Detective Ryan was nothing if not fiercely loyal, and deeply empathetic. If his family or friends was in danger he'd stop at nothing to protect them. He would do next to anything, sacrifice anything for them.

He never understood how Beckett was able to make the call to the families of their victims. He knew that he could never do it; he'd never be able to change someone's life like that. He could never be the cause of so much pain. He'd promised himself years ago that he would never inflict so much pain on anyone else in any way; he'd never be that person.

He had decided long ago to become the opposite. He wanted to help people… save them from the horrors that could be humanity. He wanted to be a Catcher in the Rye, which was eventually why he decided to become a cop. He had done it so long that it was just second nature by now.

In each victim he saw someone he cared about, someone worth avenging, or comforting. A teenage boy became his ten year old nephew, Nick, who bounced back from everything so quickly. Young women easily became either Tessa or Beth, his two younger sisters. Sometimes he would see Jenny in them. Sometimes in the men, he'd see his best friend, and his partner. He related each case directly to himself, and because of it, every person involved was his business.

When Sorenson drafted Beckett's team to help find that kidnapped little girl, Angela Candela, he immediately thought of Ashleigh. After the failed backpack drop, he spent hours at the worn down punching bag in the precinct basement, furiously trying to appease his guilt, frustration, and helplessness. By the time he left the sweaty basement it was 4:30 in the morning, but he still couldn't sleep, so he settled for restlessly pacing the streets of New York City until he had to be at work the next day.

Similarly, with the case of the murdered pop star Hayley Blue, he had to retreat back to the basement gym once he learned about some of the twists the case took, especially when Castle found the breakthrough in her last song. He had known there was something that he was missing, and when he heard the details, he was infuriated by his own obliviousness. He should have known.

That compassion and personal relation to each case is what drives him to help the families, and avenge the victims. It's what makes him such a good cop.

•••

Detective Javier Esposito was very work-oriented when the job required it to be. When he stepped on a case, it became exclusively and strictly the job. His highest virtues were truth, and justice. He couldn't be out finding the truth if he held personal attachments to the case.

But that didn't mean that he backed out if he started to get sentimental. He just knew when to take a step back, and compartmentalize. Over the years he'd learned how to separate attachments from the facts, and kept a stoic face.

Outside the job, he was deeply protective of the people he cared about, and would defend them to the end. Had he ever needed to choose between his personal life and his duty, and commitment to the truth, he was unsure of which side he would take. As much as Esposito would like to believe he would support his responsibility to the family of the victim, he wouldn't delude himself into believing that there was no chance of him protecting the people he loved over what was right. He knew there was always that chance.

That objective mindset and ability to compartmentalize is what helps him to find the truth, and give closure to the families of the victims. It's what makes him such a good cop.

•••

The two partners balance each other perfectly, and despite their huge differences, they somehow appear to be completely the same. Their witty banter mixed perfectly, and they could spend days bouncing quips and clever remarks off each other. No matter their separate backgrounds and vastly different upbringings, they were so similar at their jobs, even when they approached it from completely different sides. After three years of working together, they were practically inseparable.

They each had different methods, and balanced each other out. The close connection they had, that helped combine Ryan's intuition and subtle understanding of people with Esposito's determination and quick thinking is what made them such fantastic partners.

When Castle had started shadowing Beckett, he noticed the close bond between the two, but originally wrote it off as some common, subconscious thing that naturally occurred between partners. After all, partners did trust each other with their lives, and spent hours upon hours in each other's company daily. It was only after he had spent some time at the precinct meeting other teams that he learned this wasn't the case, and that the connection he saw was singular to them. It was so prominent, that he couldn't help but include it in Heat Wave, and even gave them a nickname.

They really were best friends, and as close as brothers. After three years, they knew close to everything about each other. Though both were normally private people, they found that they felt at ease opening up to the other since near the beginning. Even though an unspoken rule of thumb in the precinct is to respect personal boundaries between coworkers (both knew that the rule was put in place for people like Beckett) neither of them seemed to have a problem with comfort zones.

Obviously at first there were some protective walls and past ghosts that had to be put to rest. Esposito had just lost his partner, and was still angry, grieving, and wounded, though he refused to show it. When Ryan first met him, he met a man who didn't want to replace his old partner, and didn't want to get close to another partner, for fear of losing another good friend. Ryan's first impression of Esposito was the wounded stoic. Then he slowly dug his way to the real guy underneath.

When Esposito was first assigned Ryan as his new partner, he saw a cheery, but modest guy, who had too much experience and intuition to be considered a rookie, but the appearance of one who believed in people too much to have been working as a cop for very long. He reminded Esposito a bit of a puppy, always eager to please, but he also turned out to be a funny guy, and pretty chill too. Esposito's first impression of Ryan was the optimistic newbie, who had yet to witness the worst of humanity. But as time passed, Esposito began to think that there was something deeper that Ryan was hiding.

•••

One day, during the middle of a case about a vampire, he overheard an unusual conversation between Castle and Beckett. At first, the abnormality of it was the distinct lack of sarcasm, innuendos, and/or Beckett glaring, but then when he started to really listen, the content surprised him as well.

"_Psychology 101: they probably had something happen to them when they were younger. Maybe they saw their dog get hit by a car, attended an open-casket funeral, had a loss of a childhood friend, or… parent. Some people become vampires. Some people become cops."_

Beckett's inciting incident was nothing less than obvious; her mother's murder. Everyone in the precinct knew that. Not knowing the reason for her life being uprooted, and her sudden loss of a female role model, she became determined to solve the case herself, so she could finally find some closure. Even when she finally let go of the unsolvable case, she still kept it with her. It drove her to be such a good cop; she became determined to never let a family go without the closure and justice she never got.

Castle had done what he always did when asked about the origins of his interest in murder. The made-up story about seeing a boy's dead body on a beach didn't last long before Beckett uncovered the ruse. In Esposito's opinion though, Castle had crossed some sort of line when he made up that tale. The writer was much too flippant about the question. Even though Esposito himself tried to lighten the somber mood that came with the job description, there were times when respect had to be paid, especially in the topic of many people's pasts.

Another story Castle told about the beginnings of his inspiration as a mold about the beginnings of his inspiration as a mystery writer was a certain famous British spy. Esposito wasn't sure if he believed that it inspired his fascination with the macabre. It may have been a contributing factor, but not the true beginning. As much as he would never admit it, Esposito had read Castle's books, and that British spy was no connection to the raw humanisms Castle depicts in his writing.

Esposito could make some pretty good guesses as to what his own beginning was. And they would be some very safe guesses too. It was true that not all cops had traumatizing events early in their childhood, but he had come to notice that many of the best cops did carry chips on their shoulders. Beckett was a prime example of that. And, while he couldn't stand the arrogance he heard in his thoughts, he believed himself to be another example.

But he refused to dwell on the past. Detective Esposito kept his eyes focused on what was directly in front of him, even if he knew that he never looked back because he was afraid of what he'd find. It wasn't important. He had overcome his ghosts long ago, and laid them to rest. Now, he focused on bringing down the bad guys.

But what first started Ryan on the path to becoming a cop … Esposito had absolutely no clue. He knew one thing for sure; his partner was a fantastic cop. Whether it was dealing with families, digging for information, researching for Beckett, or coming up with new leads, Ryan had an uncanny intuition.

When Castle first started shadowing Beckett, Ryan was by far the first one to understand and emulate his humanistic theories. Before, the team had worked each case like a game of fill-in-the-blanks. Once everything fit, then they made an arrest. In hindsight, Ryan always seemed to struggle with the fill-in-the-blanks method, and it became more obvious when Castle appeared that Ryan enjoyed the humanity of the job, and had an affinity for noticing the small things that people try to cover up. While Castle showed his people skills by thoroughly understanding the obscure details about the murderers, Ryan was amazingly able to put himself into the shoes of the victim.

There was no doubt in Esposito's mind that Ryan was a fantastic cop because of his abstract way of thinking. But once the idea was planted in his mind, it was near impossible to shake. He knew his own back-story, as well as Beckett's way too well for him not to worry. He was well aware of that. Ryan was one of the most stable, balanced guys he had ever met (no matter how whipped the dude was) and never seemed to lose his eager, hopeful belief in humanity, despite seeing the worst of it daily. No one like that could possibly carry scars too deep, and he had never seen anything surface in Ryan that would suggest anything of the sort. There was not nearly enough evidence to lose sleep over, and wasn't worth the awkward conversation that would unavoidably ensue if Esposito approached his partner about some trauma that probably didn't even exist.

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**Well, now I need to know what you think. Should it continue? I know I haven't written in forever, but I'm not sure if I like it. If it gets a good response then I'd love to continue. Regardless, review please.**


	2. Is Castle Traumatized?

**There's something about mass-producing story chapters that just gets me. I love it. But still, only a few more in this brief span of time before I need to hold off for review's sake.**

**Disclaimer: Oh, in the course of two minutes, I have had a massive take-over of ABC, and now Castle is mine! Not.**

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**Chapter Two: Is Castle Traumatized?**

It was a slow day at the precinct and there hadn't been a call for a murder. That left Ryan at his desk, slowly chipping away at the never-ending pile of paperwork. He was honestly starting to believe that Esposito was getting everyone in the precinct to sneakily add a folder of paperwork to his pile each time he finishes one write-up, simply to watch him go crazy. Well, he had to hand it to his partner, it was working splendidly.

Then again, if his partner was up to his old tricks, that wouldn't be such a bad thing. When the dramatic twist involving Esposito's old partner arose in a case about a retired thief, emotional turbulence and confusions in loyalty swept the precinct. Ryan knew from the first mention of the name "Fred Cana" that this case was going to be different. Unlike the rest of his colleagues, Ryan wasn't surprised by Esposito's reaction. He had known for over two years about the reasons behind Esposito's sudden transfer to homicide.

When Thornton suddenly became implicated in the murder, he knew that the case was going to carry serious repercussions for at least Esposito. By the end, he had walked away shaken too. Ryan still remembered the terror in his voice when he shouted at Holliwell where his partner was. Ryan never shouted; the last time he raised his voice was well over five years ago, because he tried not to let any sort of anger or fear get the better of him, and cause him to lash out at the people he cared about.

But he had been so terrified that he'd failed at doing his job and protecting his partner. He was supposed to have Esposito's back no matter what. And he'd almost screwed up again. For all he knew, the person he saw as his brother could've been bleeding to death somewhere in the building, and he had been too late to stop it. Luckily, nothing too damaging did happen, but for all he knew, it could've. That night he never went back to his apartment. He just wandered the streets of New York with no destination whatsoever until he had to return to the precinct the next morning; thoughts repeated themselves endlessly in his head. _I did it again. I screwed up. Just like last time, I screwed up. Almost let my partner die. Half an inch to the left is all it would take. I should've been there. I screwed up. _

But no matter how much residual guilt Ryan had been left with after the case, Esposito walked away with far worse scars than he did. His partner's guilt, and confusion, and betrayal far outweighed his own, and he never forgot that. Even though over a week had passed, he was still in a fog from the experience. Since that night Esposito had been pulling hours that would put Beckett to shame, and kept himself even more stoically removed from the cases than he normally was. Things were finally starting to fade back into normalcy, but it was a slow process.

Ryan had just opened up a new folder of paperwork from the huge pile that he needed to chip away at, when Esposito turned around suddenly to face him. It was clearly a serious matter judging by his partner's face, so he quickly dropped the write-ups he had left to do, and turned around as well.

"Think Timmy will become a cop?" It was seemingly out of nowhere. But by now, he knew to address the question at hand, because Esposito was straight-to-the-point, and liked answers.

"Maybe. Things like this tend to stay with you. Especially at a young age." The answer was the best he could give, and Esposito seemed lost in thought about that for a minute.

"Like Beckett," he finally answered, his voice and expression remained carefully neutral. It wasn't a thoughtful answer drawn from several hours of pondering. It was simply stating a well known fact.

"Yeah man, like Beckett."

When no one said anything for a minute, Ryan assumed the conversation was over between them, but just as he was about to turn back around to continue on the evil case notes in the ever-multiplying folders, another question caught his attention.

"What about Castle?"

"What about him?" Esposito sighed at Ryan's counter-question, as if he didn't know how to explain something to him.

"Remember all those months ago… Castle's comparison between becoming a vampire, and joining the force?"

"Yeah…" The details of the conversation had eluded him, but Ryan remembered the gist of it. Basically just attributing the first step of a journey to some sort of traumatizing event in a person's early life.

"And remember how when Beckett asked what started him on writing about murder, he fed her a load of bull that sounded like it was right outta one of his books?"Ryan nodded again, starting to have an idea as to where this was going. "Think something actually did happen to the guy, or he's just acting it up like usual?"

As much as he had begun to anticipate something of the sort, he was still stumped at how to answer without sounding too much like a smart ass. Eventually he just decided to screw it and be straightforward. It was the only way Esposito would accept it.

"Honestly?" Esposito's slight nod prompted him to continue. "'Course something happened. Nothing too bad, but something happened. My guess is high school, but the age is dicey. It didn't happen to him, or anyone close to him, otherwise it'd still show up sometimes. It was probably just an acquaintance or a classmate, and the situation might've been narrowly avoided too. Sometimes near misses are just as scary as the actual thing." Ryan paused to watch Esposito trying, and failing to absorb all of what he was saying for a moment before he continued again.

"Probably some statistic related to kids that every kid assumes they'll never be part of: drunk driving accident, drug overdose, Columbine threat, death of a distant relative, depression, maybe even suicide attempt." Ryan curiously watched his partner tense for a moment when he spoke the words. Worried that he'd struck an unknown nerve, he quickly backpedalled."Of course, I could easily be wrong, but that's my interpretation. My guess is, he saw something happen to someone he recognized by face around early high school, wondered what the odds were, and then set out to give himself closure by giving the kid a story to explain what happened."

Esposito was deathly quiet again, seemingly lost in thought over Ryan's thorough, yet believable analysis.

"How d'you figure that?" He finally asked.

"Dunno, just the way he is man. It's in the way he acts, and the way he sees things. Everyone in the precinct is shaped by the influences of their past. Each of them has a story. It makes them who they are. Just go backwards and it's usually pretty easy to figure out the general of what happened. Odds are he gave a bluff story to Beckett because he didn't remember the event, or didn't deem it important enough next to Beckett's story with her mother."

Esposito went completely silent again, and Ryan patiently waited for another question, some explanation of why he asked, or some sort of transition into more light-hearted topics. After more than a minute, his partner managed to nod distantly before turning back to his desk. Ryan slowly did the same, curious as to where the question had come from, but knew to drop it. He couldn't tell if his partner was thinking over his guesses, worrying about Timmy, or was unsatisfied with the answer Ryan gave him. Part of it definitely seemed that way.

Ryan wasn't used to not knowing what was going on in his partner's head, and why Castle came into the conversation. He understood his fears about Timmy's future, but the famous writer came out of the blue.

But here wasn't the time or place for him to ask. The crowded precinct where cops were moving around constantly was no place for a _real _conversation. Today was Monday anyway. He could confront Esposito about it later, when he came over for their weekly football and beers.

•••

Esposito really shouldn't have even started that conversation. He was supposed to have put the entire case behind him, or at least be able to pretend that it was all behind him. He was supposed to be uplifted by the end result of the case, and find closure in Racine's arrest, and Ike's freedom. But all he seemed to be able to focus on was the people whose lives had been uprooted by all of this.

Ike had missed three years of his son's life. No matter how many stories Esposito told of watching the boy grow up, nothing to fix that or bring those years back. And as much as he had tried to fill in for Ike, he knew that he was no substitute for Timmy's father. If Timmy fell into the wrong crowds or made the wrong choices because of this, Esposito would never forgive himself.

And if Timmy became a cop…? It was clearly the better situation, but it still didn't sit well with him. Esposito knew that being part of the NYPD was one of the most rewarding and character-building experiences in his life, but the thought of Timmy, the young boy who called him "Uncle Javi" carrying a badge and a gun scared him. Bile rose in his throat at the very concept, the distinct taste of blame combined with it.

He shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts, annoyed at how pathetic he sounded to himself. Right now he was headed to Ryan's apartment for Monday night football, and there was still no telling whether or not his partner would mention the awkward conversation from this afternoon. The last thing he needed was the swarm of questions, doubts, and fears.

Angrily, he kicked at an empty abandoned water bottle on the ground, and muttered numerous curses under his breath in both English and Spanish. Even though he and Ryan were as close as two heterosexual non-related guys could be, there was still no way he could possibly communicate everything that weighed on his mind to his partner. Ryan had put up with him enough this past week, and Esposito refused to burden him any longer with ghosts that he had yet to bury, especially not on Monday night football.

•••

"Hey man," Esposito greeted Ryan as he unlocked the apartment door. "Way to warn me about the new lobby receptionist."

The sarcastic comment completely eluded Ryan for a moment before he remembered. "Oh! That's right."

"Yeah, and it was hell trying to explain to the kid why some random guy who's clearly not family has a set of your keys. I have to do that again, and I promise I will make you hurt." Esposito said in a stony voice, but Ryan could detect a shred of normalcy that had been missing for the past week.

"Man, what'd you say to…"

"No power on this earth Bro," his partner cut him off, and Ryan made a mental note to ask the new kid about it the next chance he got. "No power on this earth."

Esposito seemed almost normal enough, as he started to raid Ryan's fridge in search of beer and leftover take-out; all the mandatory components of a cop's kitchen. After sorting through at least three boxes of Thai food that had long since expired, Esposito managed to find an acceptable looking tupperware of what used to be chicken lo mein.

"Chinese tonight?" he asked his partner. Ryan, who was lost in thought for a moment, snapped out of the trance long enough to answer back.

"Don't bother. Pizza's on its way right now. Should be here in ten minutes." Esposito nodded and replaced the Chinese in the fridge before heading back to the couch with the beers. He felt completely at home here, and had no qualms taking control of the remote and flipping to the right channel.

Ryan however, couldn't pay attention to the game at all. Every few minutes he would glance at his partner in confusion. He wasn't sure whether or not now to confront his partner about the conversation earlier today. On the one hand, he had been a detective long enough to know that whatever it was that made Esposito start that discussion today, it was important. On the other hand, this was the first normal, relaxed conversation they'd had since they arrested Racine. Finally, Esposito was beginning to move on from the entire experience, and he didn't want to mention it, and open up fresh wounds.

"I'm telling you bro, there's no way this team's ever gonna get their acts together and ever win a game. I don't know why you still root for them."

"Oh now come on, that's an exaggeration!" Ryan whined back, starting up an argument about the two teams on the screen in front of them.

He decided to let the subject go for now. As long as things got better, what was the need to know? It was over. And hopefully, they wouldn't run into any more personal cases from here on out.

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**I still am not sure if I like it. You have to tell me. **


	3. It's Cases Like These

**At this very moment, I just realized how much of a total pipsqueak chapter this is. I'm actually a lot dissapointed with myself for this. I owe you at least one more. I mean really! This doesn't even count!**

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**Chapter Three: It's Cases Like These**

It had been more than five weeks since Castle had left to go to the Hamptons to finish his book with his Barbie doll of an ex-wife, and Beckett was more focused on work than they'd seen her in a long time, which meant she didn't want to think about it. Esposito had finally overcome the Finch case, and was back to his old self. However, he and Ryan had cut down on banter again for Beckett's sake. Until the shock of Castle's departure faded, they planned to stay fairly quiet.

Esposito was sure from the moment he was jolted awake at 4:30 in the morning by Beckett's call that this particular body was gonna cause a lot of commotion.

"Esposito," was all the greeting he gave. Likewise, he didn't expect much of a greeting from the focused detective on the other end of the line.

"Get Ryan and get down to Gramercy Park immediately. Someone just called to report a body. It's bad." Esposito didn't have time to react before he heard a resounding click. The exhausted detective allowed himself another minute to lie in bed, before calling Ryan's cell, while simultaneously trying to get into clothes. On the fifth ring, he was met with the groggy voice of his partner.

"It had better be the apocalypse, dude," was the greeting he got. He wasn't sure if it was more or less favorable than Beckett's.

"Someone's found a body, and this is supposed pretty bad. We gotta meet Beckett up in Gramercy. Want me to pick you up?"

"Come bearing coffee."

"Meet you in ten."

He hung up the phone and pocketed it before grabbing a couple of slices of cold pizza, and rushing out the door to his car. One quick Starbucks break later, he had pulled up to Ryan's apartment building, where his exhausted partner clambered into the front seat, and grabbed the coffee mug in the cup holder next to him.

"You look like crap," was the first thing Esposito said. It was true too. His eyes were lightly bloodshot, and there were dark bags under each eye.

"Restless couple of nights." It wasn't an unusual occurrence for Ryan to come into work without much sleep, but very rarely did it show as distinctly as it did this morning. Ryan's clipped phrase and overall tense behavior suggested that he really didn't want to discuss it, so Esposito let the subject drop. For a few minutes, they rode in silence, cozying up to the coffee that was much stronger than usual, and the cold pizza, as it was probably the last thing they'd get to eat for a long time today.

Finally, they reached the park, and pulled over. A few officers were circling the park's tall gate with yellow tape, and somewhere beside a tree and some flower bushes, Esposito spotted the lovely figure of Dr. Lanie Parish. She as well as the flowerbeds were blocking his view of the body, but as they got closer, the cold figure came into vision, and both detectives froze in shock for a second. Esposito was very quickly beginning to regret the cold pizza. Next to him, Ryan stood with an expression of similar horror.

"Who was she?" Ryan's choked voice was quieter than it normally was, even on his most silent days. This was barely above a whisper. Lanie turned around at the question with a somber expression.

"Due to the age there's no ID. I'd say she's about eight or nine years old. Your cause of death was blunt force trauma; she took a blow to the back of the head. There are trace amounts of possibly glass shards in wound, and lack of blood at the scene suggests that she wasn't killed here. No signs of restraint either."

Beckett chose that moment to appear, coffee and bear claw in hand, her face was equally as stoic as Esposito's was. "Time of death?"

"Based on lividity, somewhere between 8:00 and 11:00 last night." Lanie sighed heavily.

It was always hard when the victims were young, but normally "young" meant teenagers, who'd gotten involved in things they shouldn't have. But this was a child. Whatever this was, he knew that this was going to be one of those cases that showed the nauseating side of people. How could it be anything else?

The girl was only three and a half feet tall. She was petite, with fairly light skin, though it took Esposito several minutes for him to find an area of non-bruised skin for him to conclude that. The small area was the inside tips of her fingers. The large, rounded eyes, wide open in shock were a dark chocolate brown. All of her features were very soft, and she still hadn't lost the cherubic appearance that only children had. She was the epitome of innocent, and she didn't deserve this.

"The worst part is the bruising; for starters, her face is badly bruised, as if she's been hit several times. She's also got bruises on her wrists and arms, and all of it is pre-mortem. I don't know the full extent of the injuries, but when I get her back to the lab I can run some tests, and I'll get back to you."No one liked the sound of that, but all of them knew that there were too many possibilities to start making guesses. Were it Castle, he'd probably have a slew of decisions already that explained everything.

"Moving the body usually means the killer had some presence of mind." Ryan stated quietly.

Everyone was dealing badly with the shock of the body, but his partner's voice completely shocked him. It sounded almost wounded, as if he personally knew the child. From just listening to his voice, Esposito knew that, for whatever reason, this case had already hit Ryan the hardest. Esposito quickly compartmentalized all of his emotions, for fear of sounding like his partner when he opened his mouth.

"Gramercy Park is a private park. See the gate? Only people who lived nearby, and paid annual fees get keys. Killer had to have had access." Esposito noted, keeping his own voice steady and professional. Beckett nodded.

"Have CSU canvas the area, and see if you can get a list of everyone with access to the park. Also, reach out and see if anyone's filed missing child reports from that area recently. See if we can contact the parents that way. See if you can run any registered sex offenders and see if any of them have a taste for little girls. I'm going to talk to the woman who reported the body in, see if she can ID our vic. Meet back at the precinct in an hour and a half." She was fully in work mode, and itching to solve this one quickly.

Esposito nodded to Beckett, all too glad to escape the sight of the tiny body. He couldn't look at it anymore. "C'mon," he gestured for Ryan to follow, but his partner stared at the little girl's corpse for a few more seconds before finally breaking eye contact, and turning away. Almost as if he couldn't stop looking.

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**Because this is like, a half of a chapter, I'll give you one more, but after that, it's up to you guys whether more is to come. I'm starting to dislike it, because I started writing this a few weeks ago. Reading over it now, it isn't nearly as good as I remember. Sigh. That does tend to happen a lot.**


	4. Renaming Jane Doe

**And this is the last you're getting out of me tonight. If I get any reviews, or any readers, then I might continue this, but like I've said before, this is entirely dependent upon you guys. I've given you a body, a beginning of a plot, some characters, etc. Now lets see if anyone likes it. I won't be offended if you don't. Like I said, I'm not even sure if I do. Just keep me updated on your interest levels.**

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**Chapter Four: Renaming Jane Doe**

"Turns out that more people have access to the park than we thought," Esposito said as he walked over to the murder board, where Ryan was beginning to fill in what little information they had. "Everyone who lives in the surrounding buildings can buy a key, which is changed annually. Also, members of the National Arts Club, The Players Club, and the Calvary Church get key access. Also, every guest at the Gramercy Hotel gets a key."

"The Players Club?" Ryan turned to his partner, smirking.

"I know bro. For actors, they sure are clueless about naming their clubs." Esposito smirked.

Captain Montgomery chose that moment to walk up to the pair and examine the empty murder board. "Please tell me we have something," he said impatiently

"Well, the park has no security cameras, so we won't be catching a break there. Nothing came back from missing persons so far. They said they'd keep us posted, but I wouldn't count on it. There's a backup on sex offenders, and we should get that information later today." Ryan recounted his own research.

"Beckett is talking to the woman who found the body; Susan Winslet. The woman was walking her six week old puppy when the dog starts going wild and barking at a tree. Woman looks over and sees the little girl, and calls the police." Esposito summed up.

"And she recognizes our vic," Beckett walked over to the murder board to join up with her team. "Says she sees her every afternoon around 5:00 pm at the park with another boy and what looks like a baby sitter. I've got a bit of time, I'm gonna try the local elementary school to see if I can get an identity, and if not, I'll try to catch them on their normal routine. Also, Lanie just called for a follow-up on the body, and found something interesting. Esposito, can you hit the morgue and see what she's got for us this time?"

"Will do,"

As quickly as Beckett came into the conversation, she left. After her disappearance, the three remaining men in the conversation quickly scattered. The Captain escaped to his office, Esposito headed off to the morgue to consult the good Doctor Parish on new information, and Ryan was left to add more question marks to the murder board.

He couldn't help but feel so utterly useless. They didn't even have a name for her yet, and until they did, there wasn't much they could do. All there is on the murder board is question marks. The only marks on their timeline were when she was found, and her general kill zone. He paced up and down nervously; he could just feel those two words staring down his back in furious disappointment. Those two small words were driving him, Beckett, and everyone working the case absolutely crazy; the two small words were "Jane Doe." Everyone hated not knowing the victim's name, and this time, it was excruciating.

•••

"G'morning Doctor Parish." Esposito said as he entered the morgue. It had been a rough morning for everyone, and it still wasn't before eleven yet, so he had the foresight to bring coffee.

"Hasn't been too good so far, so you'd better have some sort of peace offering, Detective," she called out from the next room, a hand waving absently through the window.

"Will coffee work?" He asked, as she walked back into the main room of the morgue. The first thing she did is make her way to the coffee, sniff at it suspiciously, then taste it, before setting it down again, a little smirk playing at her face.

"Hazelnut blend with milk and one sugar. Yeah, it'll work just fine." To prove it, she took another long sip, and replaced the cup one more time, never breaking eye contact. "How did you know?"

"I'm a detective, it's my job," he replied with a smirk of his own, before refocusing on the case. "Beckett said you'd found something?"

Lanie's wide grin dimmed at the mention of the bruised girl on her table, and Esposito couldn't stop the small pang in his chest for the loss of that smile. He quickly shook it off however, and refocused his attention on what the ME had to tell him. He detached himself from his emotions so he could focus on the job exclusively.

"Well, I ran your every day checks. She's got bruises on her chest and back as well. I also ran the trace shards I found in the wound, and it's porcelain. Odds are, she hit her head against a sink or a bathtub, or someone hit her with a dish of some kind from a kitchen. Maybe a pitcher, or a mixing bowl."

"Any way that you could narrow it down for us?" Esposito asked.

"You're a detective. Go detect! I'm not gonna do your job for you."She grinned again, and gave him a soft shove in the shoulder teasingly. He laughed.

"Okay, okay, I know a brush off when I see one. Anything else before I go?"

"Oh yeah, one more thing; this girl's had sex a few hours before she died." She said it so casually, but Esposito was caught off guard.

"Sex!" He repeated incredulously, needing confirmation on her previous statement. While his job taught him to expect anything, part of him didn't want to accept the idea that an eight year old girl was already having sex. Especially because that only pointed to one horrific reason.

"I don't need to give you the birds-and-the-bees speech, do I?" Lanie teased mercilessly, and Esposito laughed again, against his will. Though that short reprieve of laughter was only a momentary pause in the somber reality of the conversation.

"She, an eight year old child, was sexually assaulted sometime before she was killed the same night? That can't be a coincidence." He said the last part as much to himself as to Lanie, and was already dialing Ryan's number before he had time to process what was happening. His mind was rushing with a thousand possibilities, which could only be reminiscent of Castle's crazy theory brainstorms that he knew everyone missed.

He was halfway out the door before remembering his whereabouts. He turned, called out a "Thanks Doc!" then continued on his way back to the precinct, eagerly filling Ryan in on the newfound information. He didn't even bother to try and figure out why he was grinning a bit wider than he normally was.

•••

"Hello, my name is Kate Beckett and I need to talk with Principal Fletcher." Kate said in her famous no-nonsense tone of voice, that she always took when it came to cases. It commanded attention and helped her get answers.

However, she felt a sudden pang of emptiness when she didn't hear a light-hearted, humorous remark come from the writer that normally hovered nearby. He wasn't here anymore, and she had to keep reminding herself of that. It was the beginning of July. She wouldn't be seeing him until September, if then. He may not even be coming back at all.

"Yes, do you have an appointment, or does he know that you're coming?" the secretary very strictly asked her, refusing to take her eyes off of her computer, Beckett saw the thin woman pull up, what appeared to be the principal's schedule.

"No, I don't have an appointment, but I really had my heart set out on talking to him today," she continued in a direct manner. She pulled out her badge and held it out for the woman to see. "Think he could make the time?"

The secretary seemed flustered at the badge, and quickly began to backtrack and apologize for her behavior, blaming her brush-off on the rapidly ending school year, and the massive amounts of paperwork still left to be done. In the back of her mind, she remembered that the Elementary school ended later than the other schools in the system because of some wild teenage pranks disrupting school for weeks. Finally, the woman gathered herself again and showed her to Mr. Fletcher's office.

Beckett thanked the woman lightly and opened the door to the elementary school principal's office without bothering to knock.

"Hello Ma'am," the mousy looking, but kindly Jonathan Fletcher looked to her in confusion. "Can I help you?"

"Good morning Principal Fletcher, I'm Detective Kate Beckett with the NYPD. I need to ask you some questions about a murder that took place last night." She didn't dance around the suspect. A few hours ago, she was looking at the horrible body of a young girl who was brutally murdered, and she didn't even know the name of the little child. She didn't have the time for pleasantries. That little girl didn't have time for pleasantries.

"M-murder? I don't know about anything of the sort. Who was murdered?" the timid man seemed to shake slightly from the shock of it all, and Beckett couldn't help but take pity on him. Very few people dealt with murder daily, especially when he worked with children for a living.

"Well Sir, I was hoping you could tell me. We found the body of a young girl this morning. She looked to be about eight years old, and we don't have an identity for her yet. I was hoping you'd recognize her, and help me contact her parents."

"I can certainly try, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to kill any of these children. They may be a bit of a handful, but they're such angels…" the principal was distraught over the concept of someone killing a child. Then again, almost all people would be.

Kate pulled out a picture from the crime scene of the body, then another close up to the corpse's face, and placed them on the desk in from of the timid little man. Almost instantly, she heard a cry of surprise and horror fly out of the principal's mouth.

"Oh dear! I believe that's Kayla Evans. She's such a sweet little girl. Albeit very shy, but sweet nonetheless. If I'm not mistaken, she has a brother," Jonathan Fletcher turned to his computer and typed something into the keyboard before nodding grimly and turning back to Beckett. "Yes, Aaron Evans. He's in fifth grade. Also a very quiet boy. Tends to keep to himself most of the time, but a brilliant student. I don't know why he was held back a year."

The man was mostly talking to himself now, barely aware of Kate at all, and she was starting to feel a bit awkward. She didn't have time for this; she needed to contact the parents, not comfort the elementary school principal through his method of coping with grief.

"Would it be possible for you to get me a copy of her file, as well as her parent's contact information? I still have to tell her parents about this."

"Oh, certainly!" he said in surprise, just remembering what she had asked of him in the first place. As he gathered up the necessary files and papers over his computer, and started sending them to the printer at the other end of his office, he continued talking about pointless facts and memories about the Evans' children.

"I'm going to hate to let Jessie know today. The girl is just going to be horrified. You think these things will never happen to you…" Beckett suddenly cut him off, curious about this mysterious figure.

"I'm sorry, who's Jessie?" She asked, not minding if she interrupted a spiel she'd heard hundreds of times.

"Jessie is their babysitter. She picks them up from school every day. Kayla's mother had to give her special permission at first to pick them up, there was a big hassle I had to cause about it, for the safety of the students, but Jessie was so patient. She's a student at NYU, majoring in some sort of communications I believe. Oh dear, she loved those children so much, wait till she hears…"

Kate assumed this Jessie was the babysitter who was seen in the park with Kayla every day at 5:00 pm, and that the little boy with them was Aaron. She would be sure to look up this "Jessie" later and talk to her about what she knew, but her first priority was the parents. She turned around to the printer behind her, busy at work with the papers. When the frantic printer finally stilled in a proud completion, she snatched the files with Kayla's parent's contact info, and rushed for the door.

With a quick "Thank you for your help" to Principal Fletcher, she made her way out of the school, and hurried back to the precinct. Her left hand clutching the files tightly, as if afraid that they'd blow away on the next breeze and her right hand already dialing Ryan's number into her cell phone.

It was time to get rid of that ugly "Jane Doe" taking up Kayla's name on their murder board.

* * *

**Bam said the lady! Now it's time for you guys to decide if this story will stay alive. **

**Season three opens in a few hours and I'm poised by the TV, ready to pounce. But if you can, please let me know. I want to continue this, but only if other people will enjoy it. **


	5. The Call

**Well, I guess it's settled then. Five or more reviews is the deal closer for me; I'm continuing the story. I will warn you though; while I do have several chapters already written, and will avoid keeping you waiting to the best of my abilities, I have a ton of work, and might occasionally take some time updating. Hopefully, it'll never be more than a week though.**

**Regardless, I'll try not to let you down, and hope that you'll do the same for me. Besides clearly being about Ryan, it's similar to a Castle episode; it has Lanie, it has Beckett, it has Esposito, it has Montgomery, it even has Castle too. It won't be like some of those stories that are exclusively about one or two characters, but I think that's a good thing. Also, I'm looking for real critique if you don't mind; if you don't like something, please tell me why. I want to write for a living, so every suggestion helps.**

**M'kay, I'll stop blathering and just give you the chapter. Here's chapter five.**

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**Chapter Five: The Call**

Beckett had said it dozens of times. Everyone in the Twelfth Precinct knew it. But she continued to say it anyway. She absolutely hated this part. Since the earliest hours of the morning, she had been searching for the phone number that she now held in her hand. Now that she had it though, she dreaded having to make that call.

Less than two minutes from now, a family would be crying, horrified, and distinctly aware that they'd never see their little girl laugh again, or eat dinner with them again, or go to school, or do homework, or complain about cleaning her room; they'd never watch her grow up.

Beckett would know; many times she had run through everything that she would never do, never see, never joke about, never learn, never talk about, and never experience with her mother. They would suddenly lose a lifetime of experiences, all in that one phone call. And it would hurt. She'd be ripping out a hole in their heart that would never heal itself. The edges of the wound would eventually smooth over, become less jagged, but the emptiness would always be present.

She picked up the phone at her desk, her stomach distinctly unsettled by the impatient dial tone. Slowly and deliberately, she began to punch in the numbers.

•••

"How does she do it?" Ryan wondered aloud, staring at Beckett, on the phone with Kayla's family. She held onto the phone so tightly that her knuckles were white, yet somehow, she managed to hold her composure.

Both Ryan and Esposito knew to steer clear of Beckett when she was making the call. The pain that flashed in her eyes each time she heard that dial tone, the burden of memories long past, she needed that space. That incredible detective managed to face her fears each time she picked up that phone, but her strength was so fragile. They learned quickly not to disturb those waters if they could help it.

That's why they were shocked when Castle first started talking to her about it. Somehow, she managed to open up to him. And she'd gotten stronger because of it. But with Castle gone, it seemed that all of the good he'd done in the past two years was slowly evaporating. She was still Beckett, but her knuckles went white again when she contacted the parents, something that hadn't happened in years. And she was slowly becoming more serious again during the job, not bending nearly as often as she had been recently. It wasn't healthy how rarely the woman laughed anymore.

Though both Ryan and Esposito teased and tormented her, they really saw her as a sister, and with that, came the instinct to protect. Protect her from the job, protect her from her past, and protect her from herself when they had to. But Castle had done more damage when he left than either of them could manage. As a girl friend, Lanie could offer more help, but not a lot more.

"She compartmentalizes. It's the only way. You can't step back if you're still carrying the past. If you can't separate yourself from the job; it'll keep dragging you in 'til you drown in it. She learned it the hard way."

Ryan didn't really expect any sort of answer from his partner, who hadn't said a word since he returned from the morgue, and he sure as hell didn't expect the response that he got. Intuitively, he knew that his partner wasn't just talking about Beckett. The words were too honest, too raw.

"But she doesn't separate herself from the case at all. You see Johanna in everything Beckett does, especially when dealing with the families," he could see that Esposito really didn't want to get into this conversation at the moment, so he dropped it. "All I'm saying is that I could never do it."

Ryan saw Beckett hang up the phone and nod to them solemnly. Without looking, he knew that Esposito got the message too. Beckett got a hold of one of the parents, and they were headed over to the precinct now.

•••

"Thank you for coming Mr. and Mrs. Evans. I'm …" Beckett started talking, but quickly found herself being cut off by a subdued, far-off voice.

"Dawson." The soft spoken, mournful voice came from the woman.

"I'm sorry, what?" Beckett asked respectfully. The woman looked up at that, and finally met Beckett's eyes for the first time, almost as if she was surprised that her interruption was noticed.

"Dawson. P-please, I k-kept my last name. It's M-Mrs. D-D-Dawson." The woman was grieved and tripped over the sentence terribly, but the determined undertone in asserting her name wasn't lost on Beckett. Subtly, she shot a meaningful glance towards Ryan and Esposito watching quietly from the corner of the room, both of which nodded in understanding.

The woman before them was small and petite, and had a certain dainty quality to her that couldn't be identified immediately through specific traits. She wasn't incredibly thin, but nowhere near heavy. She had a hint of extra skin that came with giving birth to two children, but for all other intents and purposes, she was one who appeared very conscientious about her body, probably exercised as often as she could, and ate healthily.

"Of course, Mrs. Dawson," Beckett repeated warmly before continuing. "I'm Detective Kate Beckett, who you spoke to over the phone. I'm so sorry about your daughter, and I know this is a distressing time but I need to ask you some questions. "

"Anything," the father asked steadily. He maintained a calm face, but seemed distant and far-off.

In contrast to his petite wife, Mr. Evans was a big guy, the type who was a football quarterback back in college, but hadn't done much to work out or keep in shape since then. He wasn't necessarily heavy, but he'd softened up a little since his college days. Granted, he still towered over both Ryan and Esposito by several inches, and his broad shoulders were there for intimidation purposes.

"First off, can either you think of anyone who would hold any feelings of resentment towards you or your family?" Beckett prepared herself for the typical response.

"N-no, none that I c-c-can think of, and certainly none that would d-do this." Mrs. Dawson said on cue.

"Well, what about Pam? From your work, remember she called last week sounding upset?"

"N-no! P-Pam is a s-sweetheart, she w-would never…"

"Mrs. Dawson," Beckett cut in, intrigued. "If there's any reason in the slightest to make your husband believe that she could be involved, it's worth looking into if it can get us one step closer to your daughter's killer."

Mrs. Dawson sniffled loudly, and started patting self-consciously at her face, as if checking her make-up, if only for something to do. She stared at the corner of the room, refusing to meet anyone's eyes for several moments, before wiping at her eyes one more time, and looking up. She still refused to meet anyone's eyes, but started talking, her voice still shaky, but less stuttering than before.

"Her name is Pam Linden. She w-works with me. Actually, I'm her b-boss. I needed her to work late over Labor Day w-weekend, and she had to miss a f-family reunion. About a week later, her s-sister was died in a car accident." Once again, the woman wiped at her eyes, glaring slightly at her husband for making her recall this. "She was m-mourning, and angry, and b-blamed me for not getting to say g-good-bye. But later she apologized and I forgave her. There was no resentment b-between us."

"We have to examine every possible lead Mrs. Dawson, but we will find your daughter's killer. I promise." The intensity layered in Beckett's voice surprised and overwhelmed everyone listening.

"How could this happen?" Mr. Evans suddenly spoke up. He wasn't crying, but his voice was thick, and shook ever so slightly. "A daughter should have to bury her father. Not the other way around. No man should ever have to bury their little girl."

Ryan stiffened visibly behind the couple, and quickly stood up as the grieved parents did the same. Determined to look composed, he rolled his shoulders back once, and stretched his neck in mock discomfort. Pointedly, he avoided his partner's confused glance. Beckett shook both parents' hands, and Ryan and his partner both went to do the same. He first took Mrs. Dawson's hand, very softly, and careful not to break her. He offered a sympathetic smile to the woman, and for an instant, glanced down to their joined hands. In that split second, the sight made his stomach churn violently, and he suddenly had the distinct urge to retch.

He kept himself contained long enough to shake the Father's hand, remembering all too well, the man's last words. His throat tightened, and strained to close up completely; it took all Ryan's strength to not let the horror show on his face. He held the other man's hand a little bit too tightly, for a second too short, but in all other ways he appeared fine.

Beckett led the couple out, while asking a few last minute questions to them before they left. She silently signaled for the two men to begin research on this Pamela Linden.

•••

Esposito, had taken in every detail of the conversation, and took mental notes on oddities to look into. However, when the conversation neared its end, he noticed his partner starting to behave unusually. To the rest of the world, Ryan's interactions might have seemed trivial, almost normal, but knew his partner much better than that. After three years, he had the Irish man's behavior mapped out to a tee, and every gut instinct in Esposito's body was telling him that something was very wrong with his best friend.

"Hey Javi, mind starting the search for Linden without me? I need a coffee break." Ryan asked carefully, but even if his partner hadn't been concerned before, those innocent two sentences would've set off the alarms in his head instantaneously. Ryan only used his first name when something was very personal or very wrong.

"Sure. Everything okay bro?" Esposito asked, just as cautiously, if not more so than Ryan.

He knew that Ryan was, for the most part, the most level-headed, go-with-the-flow kinds of guys he knew. It frustrated Esposito to no end when he first met him that nothing seemed to bug the guy. If Beckett sent them digging through trash for hours on end, his partner would take it all in stride, and still return to the precinct with a grin on his face, while Esposito himself would come back with lingering irritation for hours on end. In the early days of their partnership, Esposito took out his frustration on Ryan several times, and his partner simply let him be snappy until his sore mood wore off.

It took a hell of a lot to get that man to raise his voice. But if something did set him off, God help whoever was in his way. When Ryan got furious, he could be worse than even Beckett.

"Fine." That word came out gruffly, and forced. He was sure that even Ryan knew the moment the word came out, that he'd never believe it.

Ryan didn't wait, didn't even give him the chance to open his mouth before he had turned around, and was walking quickly away. Esposito stood there in puzzlement for a few seconds, watching his partner rushing off, in the opposite direction of the coffee room. His partner was headed straight for the gym.

He took a second to speedily write down everything he needed to look up on a post-it, and stuck it to his keyboard, before rushing to follow his best friend, to see if he could find out what was wrong. As much as he cared about finding Kayla's killer, his friend came first.

•••

He hadn't even bothered to change out of his work clothes, and into the extra pair of sweats and the tee-shirt he kept crumpled at the bottom of his locker. There wasn't any time, he decided, with an edge of desperation in his rush to the worn down punching bag in the middle of the room.

Usually, he'd slip gloves on, or wrap up his hands first; after all, that was the proper, safe thing to do. But this time, he didn't even care if he hurt his hand; he just needed to hit something. The bag swung on its chain, groaning in protest as Ryan swung combinations of punches, jabs, and swings at it. He didn't allow himself to stop, nor slow down from the attack on the bag for an instant, even as he felt unwelcome tears stinging his eyes. He was not going to cry!

But the tears didn't seem to pay any attention to him, and soon his cheeks were stained red from the trails his leaking eyes left. His vision blurred, and each punch he threw reverberated throughout his body, until he was shaking horribly, but he couldn't stop. Even with the memories of a lifetime ago biting at his senses, connecting all too familiarly to the things he'd seen today. His mind kept chanting at him; _stop it! Stop it! Stop it! _If only he could just listen.

"Kev?" The concerned voice of his partner shook him back to his senses, and brought him back to the world around him, even though the single syllable was barely audible above his heavy breathing, Ryan couldn't have missed it. He stopped attacking the bag, his entire body was frozen. For a moment, he turned and met Esposito's worried gaze.

Even though he had stopped his work out, his racing head refused to slow. His skull was throbbing relentlessly, as if he his temples were being pounded by hammers. Silent tears and sweat stung his eyes, and blurred his sight more. The violent tremors never stopped racking his body, and he felt his weak, and unstable legs trembling underneath him. The flashing images of the choppy past kept bombarding his mind. His stomach still refused to let up, and he found it near impossible to breathe.

Finally, his fading vision completely made way for darkness, and somewhere buried deep beneath, he could feel his legs crumbling out from under him.

* * *

**I believe that this is my first cliffhanger! Aww, how memorable!**

**I still remember writing this; I loved the last scene with Ryan and Esposito. This is the beginning of my plot, right here. From here on out, things get very interesting. **

**Also, seeing as I already have the first several chapters written, clearly it'll be a bit AU from the season 3 premiere (which by the way, was phenominal!) but I may try to tie it back again later. However, I promise there'll be a few key differences. This after all, is still the middle of summer. After the Kayla case ends, I may jump ahead quicker, like I did in the first few chapters, but I'm not there yet.**

**I always hated begging for reviews, but here I am doing it. I really want to know what you guys think, because this is what determines whether I should continue, or whether I should stop. I always reply to reviews if I can, but if I start getting enough, maybe I'll start making shout-outs or giving the next chapter's promos (exerpts, chapter titles, etc.) in my author's notes (AKA the stuff above or this bold part on the bottom.) Suggestions, critique, compliments if at all possible (if you haven't noticed, I'm very self-depricating), all are welcome.**


	6. PTSD?

**Well guys, I don't really know what to say. I've gotten a mix of feedback. On the one side, there are people who are reviewing, and do keep encouraging me to continue this story, but on the other hand, I know how many hits the last chapter got versus the number of reviews. And while I hate to be the nag who begs for reviews at the end of every chapter, I was annoyed to see that three out of the eighty some-odd readers of the last chapter actually reviewed. Come on guys, if you have time to be on Fanfiction, you probably have time to shoot me one sentence or so of feedback. I'm getting mixed signals here!**

**But I did promise short waits for chapters, so this is me indulging you guys.**

* * *

**Chapter Six: PTSD?**

"Thanks for coming," Esposito didn't know what else to say. He had just watched… hell, he didn't even have a clue what he'd just seen, but the moment his partner hit the mat, he had sprung into action, breaking out of his frozen shock, and calling the first person he thought of. Now, two women were surrounding Ryan's unconscious figure, still lying on the mat, one standing next to him on the left, and the other crouched on the mat, examining his best friend.

"S'fine, just remember I don't usually work with the living." The lilting voice of Doctor Lanie Parish echoed in the small gym. She listened for a pulse, before running through the other routine checks she'd learned in her freshman year of medical school, suddenly thankful that she'd been required to take one semester of nursing.

"He's going to be alright though, right?" Beckett asked in her normal commanding voice, taking control of the situation, despite how closely it hit everyone.

"He'll be fine, don't worry about that. No concussion, no permanent damage, no scars, not even many bruises. I'm more concerned about what caused it," Lanie said professionally, though trying to keep Esposito from worrying too much. Secretly, she hated seeing that expression on his face. "I want to write it up as a panic attack, but nothing in the medical records you brought me mentions a history with anxiety disorders, so this isn't biological. Something else had to have caused this."

Lanie handed the folder with Ryan's medical history back to Beckett, and continued the routine checks.

"There was something wrong after we sat in on Beckett talking to our vic's parents, but he didn't tell me what. He came straight here and I followed him. Was shaking like mad when I found him, and he just keeled over, and hit the floor. Didn't stop shaking for a couple of minutes after, and he kept mumbling something. Sounded like some kind of apology." Esposito resented the light trembling in his voice as he recounted it. As an afterthought, he quickly added. "Oh, and he mentioned some girl too… Ashleigh, I think her name was."

Lanie turned around, and stood up, facing Beckett and Esposito. She had a grim look on her face. "Now remember, this is far from my specialty, and you should probably just get another opinion." She built up, but both detectives knew that she was stalling, "If I got this in a hospital, from what you've told me, my first guess would be Acute Stress Disorder, especially because he doesn't look like he's gotten much sleep in the past several days, but that would require him to have suffered through some kind of traumatic experience, and nothing in the situation suggests Ryan survived trauma of any kind recently. If this brought up old experiences, then that's more likely, but it also suggests PTSD."

"Lanie… post traumatic stress disorder?" Beckett questioned in shock. Out of everything she'd been expecting, that was far from the list.

"I know it sounds like a stretch, but that's the most likely explanation from what you've given me. 'Course, Ryan's used to bodies, so it can't be the case exclusively. If something in the case reminded him of a bad experience from his past, then that could trigger the kind of reaction you saw. But we'd have to know more about the trigger, if there is one, to pin it on PTSD. It could be several other things, just none that fit as well with his reaction to the case."

Esposito nodded solemnly, his mind flashing briefly to several weeks ago, when he had been wondering what started him on his path to becoming a cop. He had a sinking suspicion that this was directly related to it, and this Ashleigh person might be too. Beckett's phone chose that moment to start buzzing. She quickly checked it, finding a text message on the screen.

"Pamela Linden just got here. I need to go talk to her. I'll be back as soon as I can." Without waiting for a response, Beckett took off towards the stairs, headed back for the precinct, leaving Esposito and Lanie to stare at each other. He broke the eye contact first, rubbing his head and staring at the floor, as if he'd found something spectacularly interesting there, encoded in the cracks in the cement.

•••

"Are you okay?" She asked him softly, and he sighed at the concern he found in that voice.

"Honestly?" She nodded in response. He sighed, and still refused to look up to meet her dark coffee-colored eyes, for fear of what emotions he'd find in them. "No. Ryan's my partner. How can I be? There's something up, something that he's not telling me."

Lanie didn't speak for a long time; she had no clue what she was supposed to say to comfort the man. For several unbearable seconds, she silently drank in the haunted expression in his eyes. Somewhere in the warm milk chocolate irises of his, she hoped to find an answer to all the questions she couldn't ask him. Upon reflection, it was suddenly clear that she knew next to nothing about the colleague who made her laugh often, and always let her know the outcome of all the cases they worked together.

Everyone else at the precinct, even the usually perceptive Kate Beckett overlooked the ME's search for justice. In her own way, she wanted to bring peace to the dead bodies she worked with. No one seemed to presume that she would want the closure of finding the killer as well. But one day, after some big case was closed a few years ago Kate had invited everyone for a drink down at the nearest bar, and she had gotten to talking with Javier.

He'd already had a couple of beers and the effects were beginning to show, but she'd been utterly wasted. Most of the conversation had been meaningless flirting, but somehow the conversation meandered to the case, and Lanie had curiously asked how it had all played out. Esposito had been shocked that she didn't already know, and once she explained that people rarely put in the effort to inform her of the outcome of cases, he filled her in on the details immediately. Esposito knew that he could never have walked away from those bodies without an explanation, and he'd been horrified that she was forced to continue her job without those small rewards.

From that night on, each time his team solved a case that Lanie had worked, he would text her or call her with the final story. He was glad to bring her the closure that she deserved, and never minded when the topic of discussion occasionally drifted off into other, less professional areas.

Looking at this kind man now, she needed to find the words to say. He had offered her closure so many times when no one else considered that she might like to know. She couldn't offer him closure now, but if she could find any sort of comfort for him, then she felt an obligation to do so.

"You know, I've met a lot of cops on duty, worked with plenty of teams from a ton of different precincts too. Never have I seen two partners as close as you two are." Esposito shook his head in stubborn disbelief at her words. The entire force was too large to make a judgment call like that. "I'm serious; you two may look like the Odd Couple to anyone who doesn't know you, but I swear, you could be brothers. And you are friends outside the job as well. That's way more rare than you think."

Lanie thanked any and every God that was up there when she saw the tiny smile that forced itself onto his face before continuing.

"Whatever it is that's plaguing him, odds are it happened far off in the past, long before he even became a cop, and if your description of his reaction is anything to go off of, he's been trying to forget it since. If he's ready, he'll talk to you about it. I know it."

Esposito finally looked up to meet her eyes, that small grin still apparent. He was about to voice his thanks for her comforting words when a quiet groan spliced the silence. Both heads turned to his partner, who was slowly beginning to squint, and warily clutch at his head. Lanie turned to Esposito and nodded in understanding, before crouching again to help his partner up.

•••

"Easy there. You gave us all a scare." She said to him, and put a hand on his back to support him while he tried to sit up. "Keep your head low for a bit, between your knees, okay?"

Esposito watched him plant his feet on the ground at the corner of the mat, and lean forward so his head was rested on his knees. He was still disoriented, and looking around as best he could to take in his surroundings.

"What happened?" His voice was groggy and unsure. He was still looking nervously around the room, as if expecting to be attacked at any moment by some unseen force.

"You tell me," Esposito finally made his presence known, and Ryan finally looked at him from his awkward position on the floor.

Esposito didn't know what he had been expecting when his partner woke up, but the look that he got was unlike anything he had expected. A terrified desperation showed itself in the stare Ryan gave him for an instant before it had been wiped away and replaced with an awareness of the situation, and a sudden detached coolness that Esposito never remembered seeing on his partner's face. He had no clue how to interpret it.

Lanie took the cue that her job was essentially done, and began to pack up the couple of things she brought with her. Finally she turned to his partner and gave her final say on the matter. "Now you'd better take it easy on the intense workouts for the next couple of days. If it happens again, go see a doctor, okay?"

He didn't even turn to look at her when he nodded in understanding. He still had yet to say anything; it seemed he was still shocked by the entire thing. But Lanie didn't seem all too fazed by it, and rubbed his back once comfortingly before standing up. Before she took off, she met Esposito's eyes, and offered a reassuring half smile, then walked off, leaving the two partners alone.

•••

"Ms. Linden, you've been read your rights?" Beckett asked as she walked into the interrogation room. The woman had choppy red hair, but otherwise had no intriguing features about her. She seemed very timid, and intimidated by everything around her. She simply nodded at the question. Beckett took pity on the woman, and softened her tone.

"I was told you had gotten into a fight recently with your boss; Natalie Dawson. Some pretty heavy accusations were made. Can you tell me about that?"

"She asked me and several other people to pull extra hours on Labor Day weekend and I had to miss my annual family reunion. And then about a week later… my sister passed away. And so, in a moment of anger, I lashed out at Natalie. Why are you asking about something that happened three weeks ago?"

"What was the last word on the argument between you two?" Beckett side-stepped the woman's question, and she started to gain back her confidence from not getting an answer.

"I apologize for unfairly blaming her, and we forgot the entire incident; things went completely back to normal. Why?"

"How close were you to Natalie?" Beckett asked quickly.

"We were friendly, and of course we knew each other through work, but not much besides that. Honestly, what is this all about?" The woman was getting frustrated by her lack of answers, but Beckett paid no mind to that.

"You're lying Ms. Linden. I have a recording of a message you left on Mrs. Dawson's phone, which suggests that you were closer to her than that, and also that you were a little more than angry about your sister's death."

Beckett pulled out the recording and gingerly set it down on the table between them before pressing the play button. Pamela Linden's angry and confused voice came out of the slightly crackly recording device, and hung in the air with each sharp word. _What kind of game are you playing at Natalie! You've been dragging everyone through the mud these past few weeks, especially me! And you won't even give us the courtesy of an explanation for all of this bull. But forget everyone else; you've been asking way too much of me lately! I should be preparing for my older sister's funeral, not pulling extra hours and getting all the extra work to cover your ass! My sister is dead! Do you know what that means, what that's like? Of course not! You lead a charmed life! Until you know the pain of losing your family you'll never get it! _

"Listen, I know I shouldn't have said those things," she began before Beckett could get a word in, "but I was stressed about all the extra work she was piling on, and I was still grieving. Regardless, I felt bad about what I'd said and apologized to her a few days later. Everything was solved."

"What did you mean when you said she'd been asking way too much of you?" Beckett had a gut feeling that there was something important that she was missing.

"Like I said before, she'd been making everyone work longer and later than usual, and I was getting too dramatic because of the stress." Beckett was sure that she wasn't getting the full truth from Ms. Linden on that subject, but decided to drop it for the moment.

"Well that's a very nice story, but I've got one with a slightly different ending. You weren't just angry and grieving, you were furious beyond belief that you'd been working so late recently and hadn't had a chance to talk to your sister too much anymore, and then your boss takes away the last chance that you had to go see her and then she's gone. You think of how unfair it is for you to have to suffer all that pain, and you want her to know what it's like. So you decide to teach her a lesson, and take away the most important person in the world, just like she did to you."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait! What, are you saying that I killed someone? I didn't hurt anyone, and nothing you said was true! She's my friend! I wouldn't do something like that!" Ms. Linden was shocked, and quickly started protesting. Her voice got very loud, and a little shrill as well. She was no longer timid at all, but very affronted, and suddenly defensive.

"Yes, well you were the only co-worker of Natalie Dawson's with access to Gramercy Park, which is where we found her daughter's body this morning…"

"Wait, her daughter is dead? And you think I killed her? This is ridiculous!" She interrupted her suddenly, shocked about the sudden accusation. Beckett was getting tired of this woman, and quickly skipped to the point.

"Then I'm sure you wouldn't mind telling me where you were last night between 8:00 and 11:00."

* * *

**Hopefully you will let me know what you think. **


	7. A Call from the Hamptons

**I've gotten plenty of reviews for the last chapter, and I absolutely loved it. Please keep it up, because there's nothing I loved more than checking my email and finding a new review there. Now that may say something incredibly depressing about my social life, but I try not to focus on that. **

**Regardless, here's the next chapter. Based on the title, you can probably guess who's making their first appearance in the fic. I'm pretty sure that this is one of the longest chapters I've written. He also adds his insight into the situation, although I won't say which. Just read.**

* * *

**Chapter Seven: A Call from the Hamptons**

"So you wanna tell me what's going on bro?" At his partner's words, Ryan looked up from the fascinating cement floor patterning to meet the other man's eyes. He had started to recover from the dizzy light-headedness, and his elbows had been resting on his knees, making a horizontal path between them.

He didn't even know how to begin to deal with Esposito. The guy wasn't only his best friend, who could read him like a book, but he was also a detective on top of that, which means he was trained to detect lies. Ryan was sure that he wouldn't be able to come up with anything brilliant that could explain whatever had happened. He was too tired, too worn out, too drained. A composite of the past four night's worth of sleep couldn't even fully amount to a total of one night's worth of sleep. It had been a bad week, and he knew that with this case, it would only get much worse. He hadn't had a reaction with that much damage in years.

"It's nothing, I'm probably just tired. Like I said earlier, I've had a couple of restless nights." He could hear the mechanical tone to his voice, and he was sure that his partner had heard it too. Rather than press on though, Esposito knew when to diffuse to normal talk.

"Honeymilk becoming too much of a distraction recently?" Ryan was actually welcomed the light teasing that he got from his partner about his girlfriend. It was a nice piece of normalcy before he was reminded again about what caused this conversation, and that it was keeping them from working to solve Kayla's murder.

"Y'know, you're very eager with the insults, but need I remind you I'm the one having sex, not to mention a semblance of a relationship."

"Oh, but all the chances to poke at how utterly pathetic you are almost make it worth it."

"You know what's even more pathetic?"

"Your little pet names for each other? The way you feel the need to check in on her every couple of hours? Or how whipped she made you after only two weeks of dating?"

"How much you're living vicariously through my relationship."

"Maybe we should get Lanie back here, cuz that fall must've done something to your head."

And that ended the normal conversation. He knew that Esposito had meant it as a joke, but all it did was remind him of the entire situation. Ryan didn't know how to reply, so he let the banter drift off to make room for an awkward silence.

"Who was she?" Esposito finally asked, having picked up on the distinct change in mood. Without help from anyone, the conversation had immediately slid back to the uncertain gray area of what had overtaken his partner minutes ago.

Ryan was perplexed by the question. He didn't know where that had come from, and had next to no idea to what his partner was referring to. There was a likelihood that he could guess, but he had to make sure, so he stuck with the safest response he could think of. "Huh?"

"After you went down, you mentioned some girl," Ryan stiffened slightly. His fears had been all but confirmed as to who his partner was talking about. But he waited for Esposito to continue, hoping that he hadn't already noticed his discomfort. "So, who's Ashleigh?"

Ryan had expected that name to come up, but it still hurt him to hear it. "She's…" he had every intent of denying that he knew any one by that name, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Be it out of respect, guilt, honor, or dedication, he couldn't deny her existence. Not anymore. Not to his best friend. "She's someone I knew a long time ago."

"Playground crush?" There could have been teasing in Esposito's voice, but he didn't hear any. And even though he had thought he would have been content to just let his partner believe the conclusions he had made, Ryan found that he couldn't do that either. Besides, he'd be damned to let Esposito fall into a habit of teasing him about Ashleigh in accordance to Jenny.

"Nah man, nothing like that." That was where Ryan ended the interrogation. He couldn't take any more of it. Besides, they needed to get back and help with the murder. Beckett couldn't solve it on her own, much as he knew she'd be willing to try. At least, that would be his excuse to get out of the conversation. "C'mon, don't we have a case to solve? Can't let Beckett have all the fun."

"You sure you can stand up okay?"

"I fell down; I didn't get hit with a truck. I'll be fine," Ryan said and stood up to prove his point. Unfortunately, he stood up a little too quickly and got a head rush in the process. For a few moments his sight went fuzzy again, then his head cleared, and he was fine.

"Beckett said that the co-worker got here a few minutes before and she went to question her. She should be out by now." At his partner's words, Ryan automatically felt guilty when for distracting his team in the middle of an important investigation. Someone ought to have watched the questioning, so Beckett could have a second opinion. Even if she got another Detective, it still wouldn't be as good as having her team watching, someone who was on the case.

"It'd be too easy if it was her. Not to mention it doesn't fit with the fact that she was raped before she was killed. I bet that we don't get too much from her."

"Nah man, she may not have killed her, but she's close to the family. I wouldn't be surprised if she had one of those girl connections with our vic's mom. My guess is the woman knows something, and odds are, she's not telling."

"Would you be willing to bet?"

"Ten?"

"You're on."

•••

"I dunno, it just felt like there's something she wasn't saying," Beckett said with frustration lacing her voice, after she finished recounting her discussion with Pamela Linden to the boys.

In a strange reaction, she saw a smug grin appear on Esposito's face, while next to him, Ryan groaned. He dug in his pants pocket to retrieve his wallet, where he pulled out what looked like a ten dollar bill, and grudgingly dropped it in his partner's outstretched hand. Beckett couldn't help the sigh of relief that she let out. She should be annoyed that they were betting on murder, and not taking the case seriously, but she was more relieved that if Ryan was making bets on the murder, it meant that he was okay.

As much as they all teased each other, she saw both of them as brothers she never had, and she knew they saw her the same way. Granted, for some reason, she sometimes perceived Esposito to be her older brother, and Ryan her younger brother, if only because of Esposito's over-protective and more stoic side, versus Ryan's energetic and more adorable side. Then, at other times, she saw them both as the younger siblings. Regardless, she honestly cared for the both of them, and she had been worried when Lanie called to tell her that one of her guys had passed out in the gym.

"So," Esposito continued, immediately getting back on track, "What's our next course of action?"

"First, let's see if we can confirm Ms. Linden's story. She says that she was staying with her parents down in Hastings to help prepare for her sister's funeral, and that she drove back to her apartment for work early this morning."

"Well, parents do make excellent corroborators." Esposito countered.

"See if you can get any other witnesses besides family. In the meantime I want to fill in some holes in our timeline. It's about 5:30 now, so I'm going to see if I can get in touch with the baby-sitter. She picked up Aaron long ago, and brought him home, so she's either been given the night off for the family to be together, or has taken him to the park to give him some feeling of normalcy while the parents take it all in."

"Aaron?" Ryan questioned her curiously, though Beckett thought she had detected a hint of worry in his voice.

"Kayla's older brother." For some reason, the words felt like the wrong ones the moment they came out of her mouth. Ryan seemed to think so too, as he immediately ducked his head down for his eyes to meet the floor, and he began to chew on the inside of his cheek.

"Poor kid." He finally replied, and Beckett slowly nodded in response. Her eyes burned with curiosity.

"Call me if anything interesting pops up, and I'll let you know when I find the sitter." Beckett finally said

"Will do," Esposito shot back immediately

But Beckett didn't see the confirmation, only heard it, because she had already turned around and began walking out the door, more determined than ever.

•••

"Well, Pam Linden's story checks out, she really was with her family up in Dobbs Ferry until early this morning," Esposito sighed in exasperation. They were inching along in this case when everyone was clearly itching to get it solved and over with. It was easy to be light-hearted and treat this only as the job when a normal man or woman is murdered, and sometimes even some teenagers are bearable, but a little girl was damn near impossible.

He'd already watched his partner completely lose it for some unknown reason that still worried him. The first day of the investigation was almost over and they still had no strong suspects, a lot of horrible evidence, and few leads. Everyone at the precinct knew that Beckett was going to start getting cranky if she didn't get a suspect soon. There was just something about this case. They had barely started, and they hadn't pulled up to a dead end yet, but already everyone was getting nervous and jumpy about it.

A ringing phone almost made him jump, and he felt almost as if he'd been caught zoning out by Beckett. In a way, he had, because he couldn't think of anyone else who could possibly be calling him. Without checking the caller ID he picked it up.

"Esposito."

"Hey dude! How're things down at the Twelfth without me?"

"That you Castle?" At his question, Ryan sat up straighter, and looked over at him on the phone, his partner's expression most likely mirrored his own. The shock and bewilderment evident in the Irish man's every feature.

"Hello to you Detective. And you have yet to answer my question," he sounded jovial enough, but then again, the man was always grinning.

"We're holding up alright, nothing to complain about," Esposito didn't like to lie in general, much less to people he knew and respected. But the honest answer to that question shouldn't be said on a work phone.

•••

Ryan snapped his fingers until Esposito finally took enough of his attention away from the phone call to look over at him. Mouthing the words until he finally got his partner to understand that he wanted in on the conversation, he swiveled his desk chair around to the phone, and waited for Esposito to patch him in. He didn't have to wait long before the little green light flashed on line two. Holding down the button, he picked up the phone.

"Hey stranger."

"Ryan? How're you here? Ooh! Let me guess, you're pressed up against Esposito's phone like two school girls at a sleepover?"

"No!" He replied much too quickly in embarrassment. "Esposito beeped me into the call through the desk phone, at my **separate**desk."

"And hey, the pot shouldn't be calling the kettle black; didn't Beckett tell me about this time you did the same thing to her… on her cell phone?" Esposito mentioned evilly, backing up his and his partner's honor.

"That was different!" Castle shot back, his voice suddenly several pitches higher than before, "She wouldn't put it on speakerphone!"

"Whatever you say bro,"

"So Castle, how've the Hamptons been treating you?"

"It's the Hamptons! There's sand, there's surf," Ryan heard a crumpling of some sort, then a muffled moan before Castle returned to the speaker, his voice thick, "and there's the best homemade salt water taffy in the entire country. My God, I could live off this! When I get back, I'm bringing this taffy to the precinct."

Ryan heard more crumple noises that he assumed were wax paper from the taffy wrappers. He couldn't help but smirk at the writer's childlike excitement.

After working with the guy for two years, he ought to be used to the tiny fascinations and simple joys that he found, but it never ceased to amaze him. Little kids all love to explore the world, and find the tiniest of everyday things astonishing, but as they get older, they've seen it all before, and the wonder is taken out of the ordinary. Yet somehow, Castle still managed to be fascinated by the most peculiar things, like Russian Stacking dolls, bad coffee, and custom made police vests.

Ryan sometimes got energetic to the point of annoyance for his partner, but he still rarely took pleasure and excitement from Chinese finger traps, like Castle once did. He spent the entire day playing with it, and marveling at the tiny contraption. It drove Beckett up the wall, and Ryan and Esposito were cracking up the entire time. At one point Esposito had bought that microwavable popcorn from the vending machine, and popped it in the microwave in the break room so they could properly watch the show.

"How's the book coming?" Esposito asked, and Ryan could hear the hint of caution in his voice. It was only smart too. This was where they slowly started walking into murky waters.

"The final draft is done and sent out to my editor for the last few revisions. But otherwise, I'm done for the summer. I'll probably stay out here until Alexis's program at Princeton ends in a few days, and then she'll come stay with me out here for a few weeks, and the last week, we'll head home for the giant back-to-school shopping trips. Mother takes care of the clothes shopping, while I handle the multiple Staples trips."

"Sounds like you've got this all planned out."

"Well, now that the book's done and I'm still waiting on the final edits, there's not much else to be done here. So I'm down to twiddling my thumbs and waiting for Alexis's summer program to end."

"What, your ex-wife not keeping you busy now that she got what she wanted?" Ryan heard the words come out of his partner's mouth, and he could tell Esposito was shocked that the words had actually been said. He even looked half guilty about the harsh tone that went with it, but not guilty enough to take it back. Ryan knew how he felt. Even though the oblivious writer technically hadn't done anything wrong, they were still defensive of Beckett.

"Gina?" Ryan couldn't help the burst of anger towards Castle at the genuine surprise in his voice. "She left weeks ago. Once my first draft was finished, she was satisfied, and went to focus on other clients. Not that I mind too much; that woman ran my house like a prison. On the plus side, spending a two weeks with her reminded me of why we're divorced."

As quickly as Ryan's anger surged, it dissipated. Although he still didn't forgive the guy for what he unknowingly did to Beckett, he could sympathize with him. The man was lonely, and loneliness is one of the few things that can turn a home into a prison. The presence of others, and the atmosphere they brought to a place could change a situation enormously, for either the better, or the worse.

"Well, we miss you over here man." Esposito looked at him oddly when he said it, but Ryan was glad that he did. He was even more pleased with himself when Castle answered, his voice immediately sounding less tired.

"Well, I would like to believe that I added a little something to the team, if only cappuccinos and monthly poker nights," he said it proudly, then paused a moment, then quickly sprung a last-moment thought at them, "so, have any dead bodies come up recently?"

Ryan froze. He didn't know why he found it surprising that Castle asked that, because it shouldn't be. Ryan would've thought it would be the first question on his list, but hearing the question still made him stiffen considerably. His partner seemed to get the message.

"Yeah, we just got a case this morning. We don't have any strong suspects yet, but there're still a lot of possibilities that we're running up. Right now we just need to fill in the timeline." Esposito dumped out the most overview about the Evans case, but even as he was inwardly thanking his partner, Ryan knew that Castle would never settle for such vagueness.

"Ooh! Who's the victim? Was it gory? Is it weird?" Ryan had joked with the other two guys in almost this exact conversation before, but now, the questions made him nauseous. Forcing himself to avoid another scene, he stared forcefully at his computer screen.

"Hey, I got a lead, I need to run this by Beckett. Sorry to cut my conversation short, Castle. Talk later." He tried to sound as normal as possible, and even went through the motions of scribbling a note on one of the many post-it pads sprawled over his desk, tearing it off, and making his way to the coffee room. Only in the back of his mind did he remember that Beckett was off, looking for Kayla's babysitter, but that didn't matter, because Castle wouldn't pick up on the lie. What he forgot is that Esposito would.

•••

"Whoa, quick escape much? What's going on?" Castle's laughing voice was laced with confusion, but Esposito didn't hear him. He just sighed, watching the retreating figure of his partner rushing off to the break room with a post-it covered in squiggles.

"It's got something to do with the case. Since we got it he's been really shaken up," reluctantly, he decided to leave out the part about his partner passing out, partially for the guy's pride, and partially because they were both afraid of what would and what wouldn't appear in a Heat novel.

"Okay, seriously, what is the deal with this case of yours? This is like, the third time you've dodged the question in this one conversation, and you're never one for the half truths."

As oblivious as Castle was to some of the things around him, he had a habit of picking up on the little details that most others missed. Esposito was stuck; he both trusted and respected Castle, as an investigator, and as a friend.

"The vic's name is Kayla Evans. Caucasian female, brown hair, brown eyes, pale skin. Found her body dumped in Gramercy Park at 4:28 this morning. Time of death was somewhere between 8 pm and 10 pm the night before. Cause of death was blunt force trauma; blow to the back of the head. She's got bruises all over the place, all of them pre-mortem. On top of that, she shows signs of sexual assault hours within her death."

"And her age?" Esposito knew wouldn't miss the one horrible, omitted detail that just made everything all the worse.

"She was eight."

The phone went silent for several minutes.

"How are you all holding up?"

"Can't let the job get in the way of the job."

"Lanie?"

"Braver than any woman I've ever known, with maybe the exception of Beckett," he couldn't help the small proud smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"Speaking of Beckett, how is she taking it?" The question was tentative, and fearful.

"You know her; she went into super-cop mode. Today alone, she's done the work of four cops." There was a muffled sigh of half relief, and concern, across the line, before pausing and returning in full Castle mode to the conversation.

"But Ryan?" His voice had utterly lost its sympathetic softness, and had suddenly transitioned into his curious, probing tone.

"What about him?"

"He sounds like his nerves have been strapped to train tracks and there's a train coming."

"We don't get cases like this often. When we do, it usually has some horrible ending. More often than not, there was no reason. Everyone's nerves are bound to get shot around here." Esposito said diplomatically.

Even if Castle hadn't started the summer on a bad foot for everyone at the precinct, he was still hesitant to talk about what had happened with Ryan, and what Lanie loosely concluded. Ryan barely told him anything, which meant that he didn't want to make too big a deal out of it. Hell, he was pretty sure the Captain didn't even know what had happened.

"Still, the guy works with gruesome corpses daily. You come face to face with the worst of humanity on a regular basis. The guy seems pretty frazzled for something completely work related. Just looks like there's something personal there…"

"How about you come over and see an eight year old girl being used as a punching bag? Tell me you don't get a little on edge too?" Esposito didn't expect to snap like that, especially because Castle was confirming all of his own suspicions, but he knew it would definitely throw Castle off the trail of odd behaviors that his partner was leaving.

"Okay whoa, chill out okay? I'm sorry."

"S'okay bro. You've probably just gotten rusty over the summer," he said, trying to lighten the mood, but then had a second thought. Castle was a wealth of obscure, and many times important information, especially when it came to the macabre. "Actually, mind if I ask you a question for the case?"

"Absolutely not! Do you need any more help? I could come back for the week, and be there in a few hours,"

"Nah bro," Esposito said in slightly better spirits. "Just checking what you can tell me about something. I got the general concept, but not many specifics, and I don't have time to do extra research."

"I'm your guy!" Castle's voice couldn't have been more eager, and Esposito had to smirk. "What do you need?"

•••

Castle was not easily surprised, and almost never caught off guard. Six months before the seventh Harry Potter book came out, he and Alexis had each made a list of predictions, dated the bottom, and had both of them sign each one. Out of a list of twenty guesses, he had only gotten one prediction wrong, and missed two plot twists. He knew stories; he knew characters. He often created characters that were more realistic, and more human than some real people are.

But he wouldn't have guessed that was what Esposito was looking for an explanation for. Didn't they teach them anything in the Police Acadamy training anymore? Then again, it is a really complex concept. For one long moment, he didn't know what to say. Sure he knew about it from some of his original research, before he got his first book published. When he was just starting out trying to be a mystery writer, he started looking up everything he could about murder, and the phrase came up. In the end he could never use it, because he didn't have the willpower to do that to any of his characters.

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?" he repeated it back to Esposito dumbly, before tripping over what to say. "Yeah, I know about it. I did research for a story on it. Early days. Never got published. But that's not important. What do you need to know about it?"

"Just general stuff; I dunno… when does it happen? What causes it? What does it do? I dunno, whatever you know."

Castle sighed heavily. That helped him absolutely none. In some far corner in his mind, where he dumped his retired muses, his worst book reviews, his conscience, and several other unimportant things, he was well aware that he probably shouldn't be the one to explain it to the Detective, but he didn't have the proper sense to just email him a paraphrased copy of his research.

"You know how some soldiers come back from war, and they can't reintegrate themselves back to their old lives because they saw too much, or they've lived through too much?"

"Yeah," on the other end of the line, Esposito sounded tense, and nervous.

"Well, that's one prime example. Basically, anyone who has this has experienced something horrible, usually they were threatened, or they were hurt, anything traumatic. Like being exposed to war, surviving a gun or knife fight, being kidnapped or tortured, living through a natural disaster, or a human-caused disaster like a terrorist attack, being raped, mugged or even assaulted if they thought their life was in danger,"

"So, what happens to them if they have it?"

"Well, PTSD has a huge impact on their life. You know how Beckett still hasn't completely come to terms with her mother's murder? It's not like that. Even though it still haunts her, she deals with it. PTSD is different; someone with it has experienced something so horrifying that their souls completely close in on themselves in a desperate attempt to handle it. At its worst, it can impair every area of their life."

"What does that mean? What are the symptoms?" Esposito sounded so tense now that Castle actually became afraid of wording anything wrong, in case he ruined something. This case was beginning to honestly scare him, and Richard Castle didn't scare easily.

"Almost always there are flashbacks, or recurring dreams, sometimes they're forced to relive the event in their minds. It would be so vivid that sometimes they don't realize it's not real. Usually certain objects, sights, phrases, sounds, smells, situations, or even people will become triggers that set off panic attacks, or reminders of the trauma. And they will avoid anything having to do with the event like the plague. Sometimes the mind can't find any other way to compensate, and forces the person to forget certain memories, or parts of the event. Sometimes they can't feel specific emotions. Almost always they have trouble getting to, or staying asleep at night. They get angry, or jumpy, and paranoid, or hyper-aware of everything around them."

Castle breathed for a moment, waiting to see if Esposito would cut in, maybe explaining why it was relevant to the case, or asking about a specific area, but he remained silent, waiting for him to continue. After a moment, he did.

"If someone is stuck with long-lasting trauma exposure, then there's something called Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or C-PTSD. For these victims, their ability to function in just about every area of life can be damaged. On top of that, they're normally stuck in a feeling of helplessness, and see their attacker as all-powerful. More often than not, they're subject to depression, and are likely to blame themselves for what happened. The mind, the heart, the soul: all of them are essentially obliterated in the brain's desperate attempt to cope."

The line was silent, and Castle didn't know what else to say. Apparently, neither did Esposito. They sat there for several minutes without a sound being passed between them. He couldn't imagine what twists this case could possibly be taking that had so many tragic and dynamic roads. He immediately decided to call Beckett later to check up on her, even though he had been hesitant to before.

"Thanks for the info, bro," Esposito finally replied on the other end of the line. "Listen, I gotta go, dig up some more leads for Beckett. Everyone wants this case closed soon."

"Sure, no problem,"

"Later." The single word was quickly followed by a definitive click that signaled the end of the call.

"Later," Castle repeated, and let the phone sag until it hung limply in his hand, by his side. Only then did he press the button to hang up.

He hated not being here for this one, which was affecting everyone dramatically. During the Finch Case, everyone was shaken up, and the group's protective, tight-knit nature rose. He had even been referred to as Esposito's partner, a title that made him the proudest that he's been in many years. Even though he wasn't a cop, he had been accepted into the family.

He didn't need to see the pictures of Kayla to imagine how terrible this had to be on everyone. Suddenly, he had an overwhelming need to call Alexis, and see if she was alright.

* * *

**If PTSD seemed bad before, you must hate me now that you know more about it. But I promise you, it won't be as bad as Castle's worst case scenario. Also, we may see more of Castle yet. What do you think? I'm curious about your guesses about what happened to Kayla, or what happened to Ryan. I'm not sure if I've revealed too much too early, or not enough. What's your viewpoint?**


	8. Interviews, Lies, and Videos

**Hey everyone. I've been loving all of the reviews and have enjoyed replying to them. Keep it up! **

**Sorry about the delay, I had a tough weekend, but (I hope) this chapter is worth the wait. The case is starting to pick up in this chapter, and I can't wait for you to start making guesses at who the killer is going to be. **

**Also, don't forget to read my author's note at the bottom, because I have a sneak peek for you guys. **

* * *

**Chapter Eight: Interviews, Lies, and Videos**

Detective Beckett walked up to a girl no older than twenty who was sitting on a park bench, staring distractedly out at nothing in particular. She wasn't particularly tall, and had longish brown hair that was pulled back into a low ponytail. She was wearing a plain red hoodie that was one size too large for her, and blue jeans. Carefully, she walked over to the girl, and sat next to her on the bench.

"Jessie Palmer?" Beckett asked quietly, and with some level of caution. The bench she was sitting on was directly across from the area where Kayla's body was dropped, and for all she knew, she was looking at her vic's murderer.

"Yeah?" The girl looked up at Beckett finally, sadness and confusion. "How do you know me?"

"I'm Kate Beckett, NYPD. I'm the homicide detective put on the case of your babysitting charge, Kayla Evans. I need to ask you a few questions."

"Oh, sure. Whatever you need to know." She said, still distracted. "I got the news about an hour ago, and have been here since. My Dad always took me to the park after school when I was little, so when I started babysitting Kayla and Aaron, it was just the logical thing to do, especially since they have Gramercy so close by. When I heard, it was just natural to come here."

"I know this is hard, but I need you to tell me if you saw Kayla at all yesterday. Did you babysit them?"

"Yeah, I always do weeknights. Plenty of weekends too, but then I usually get done earlier. Since it's summer, I've basically taken over though. The summer courses I'm taking at school make it hard though."

"Can you tell me what happened while you were babysitting them last night? As complete and accurate of a description as you can make it."

The girl appeared to the world to be looking at her during their conversation, but Beckett herself saw otherwise. The dazed college student was actually staring over her right shoulder. She wasn't sure what to make of it, and for some reason, the distant gazing worried her. In any other situation, she would've thought that the girl was nervous, and trying to avoid looking her in the eyes because she was hiding something, but the girl wasn't nervous at all, just sad. Still, Beckett kept the possibility open that she may not get the full truth.

"All my summer courses are morning courses, except for my 1:00 pm class, so I had no trouble picking up the kids from school at 2:30, like I do every day. We got home. I made them a little snack, just peanut butter on graham crackers, and then they did their homework until a little after three. We played the Game of Life after that. Then I got a call from Luke…" she trailed off, and started rooting through the pocket in her sweatshirt.

"Does he normally call you during the day?" Beckett asked, already knowing the answer.

"No, never. He just called to tell me about this high scale charity event that his client was hosting that he and his wife had to attend. I think he organized the whole thing too, which is why he had to get there early. He just told me that he and his wife needed to pick up their things." Finally the girl pulled out her cell phone and opened it up. The tiny device beeped several times before she looked up. "Here it is; he called at exactly 4:16."

"Were you and the kids at home when they came in to pick up what they needed?"

"No," she shook her head sadly, her eyes never leaving the blurry area that hung behind Beckett's shoulder. "We come to the park every day to get some fresh air around five o' clock. We went back to the apartment around 6:30. I made the kids dinner: grilled cheese. I think Mr. and Mrs. Evans came home sometime while we were at the park."

"Then what?" Beckett asked, getting eager to know when the babysitter had to stop providing information.

"We played games, watched TV, and then I got them ready for bed. Kayla's bedtime is at 8:00, and Aaron's is at 8:15. After I put them to bed I studied for a test I have in this summer course I'm taking at school. I have a heavy testing load this week and needed to study. Sometime around 9:40 Mr. and Mrs. Evans came home. Most days I talk for a bit with whichever parent gets home early, but they seemed pretty tired that night, so I left after five minutes of giving them the summary of the night."

"You didn't check on them at all after you put them to sleep?" Beckett asked, taking a couple of notes in a small pad.

"No, both kids are light sleepers. If I walked into their rooms to check on them, they'd probably wake up."

Beckett nodded uneasily, and decided not to freak the girl out in case she went on the defensive. The last thing she needed was an important witness who was unwilling to cooperate, so she wrapped it up.

"Thank you Jessie. You've been a big help. I'll keep in touch with you, and should be able to find you if I need anything else. Don't run off." She stood up, and quickly left the park, and headed towards the car, plugging in Esposito's speed dial the moment she was out of earshot of the shaken babysitter.

"Esposito."

"What have you got for me?" She cut to the chase hastily. He knew who she was, and she wanted to know her next course of action soon.

"Pam Linden's story checks out. Now, what have you brought for us that's so important it can't be postponed for the ten minute drive back to the precinct?"

"Call it a hunch, but there's something missing in our timeline," Beckett started, and continued before Esposito could interrupt. "She filled in our gap, but I need you to confirm her alibi that she was with them from two thirty to nine thirty-five. Something seemed out of place."

"You think the babysitter slipped out at some point?"

"Her descriptions of the day went from very specific, to wishy-washy at best. Search around and see if she was spotted anywhere else after six thirty."

"Will do," Beckett heard Esposito cut off on the other line, then some muffled debating before she heard a new voice on the phone.

"Beckett, when did the babysitter leave again?" Ryan's curious voice met her ear, and she immediately knew what he was getting at.

"She told me nine thirty." The epiphany seeped into her excited voice. Finally they had a good lead on what had actually happened that night. Normally, murder is never straightforward, but this case had been nothing but straightforward, and simple. With the exception of Ryan's strange reaction, nothing was unexpected, and if Castle had taught her anything, it was that if something is easy, it's generally wrong.

"But the parents said that they got home before just before ten thirty. One of them is lying."

"Ryan, see if you can get the camera footage from the hotel lobby. I want the exact time each of them came in. I'll be back in twenty."

She hopped in the car quickly, and revved the engine, eager to get back to the precinct and fill in the hole in her timeline. But first she needed to fill in some other large elephants in the room. The largest of which, was Mr. Evan's mysterious charity event, and see what she could find out about it. Still, many unanswered questions echoed in her mind irritatingly. Why would either the parents or Jessie lie about Mr. and Mrs. Evan's return time? What wasn't Mrs. Linden saying? Why was Jessie so distracted?

•••

It didn't take long to contact the apartment lobby and convince them to email the digital footage from the camera of yesterday and this morning to him. He knew the lobby clerk from his first sweep of the neighborhood, and simply had to give the man his badge number, and minutes later, the videos were in his email. Now he was scanning through them, not as quickly as he normally does, but nowhere near real time either.

So far, the babysitter's story checked out. She had first entered the building with the kids at 2:35, so it made sense that she picked them up a few minutes before. Similarly on cue, she left with the kids again at precisely 5:00 where she said she took them to the park. But when the clock sped past a quarter after six, he set it to real time again, just in time to watch both parents rush through the doors at 6:19. They looked like they had been arguing recently, or were angry at each other at the very least. They left shortly after, at 6:27, equally as red-faced and cold as before, if not more so. So far the babysitter had been accurate in calling it. She had missed the parents, but only by a couple of minutes if her story checked out.

Ryan was running the video at only a couple of notches above real time now, and watching very closely, as this was where Jessie was supposed to come back after the park. At that moment which was clocked at 6:34, he spotted Kayla, and her brother burst through the doors, focused entirely on a race to the elevator. Ryan allowed himself a moment to smile sadly at the image. They looked so innocent; neither had any clue at the time that this was the last time that little boy would have a sister.

Then, he noticed something in the video that made his jaw literally drop, and hang open limply in shock. Making sure he hadn't missed anything, he rewound the tape to play the last few minutes and watched Kayla and Aaron's big entrance two more times before he was convinced.

"Son of a bitch!"

•••

Beckett stood outside of Mr. Evan's office building. Slogans for some politician that she hadn't taken the time to learn too much about were splattered over every inch of the windows, as if an advertising factory had puked all over them. She locked the car, and was about to step into the building to talk with her vic's father when her phone rang.

Out of habit she quickly glanced at the caller ID then moved to press the "Talk" button, but quickly did a double take once her brain processed the name.

"Castle?" She asked, confused beyond belief. This was far from the best time to be sidetracked by her own personal dramas. Why was he even calling her now? She hadn't talked to him all summer. Hell, she was still annoyed with him, even though he didn't actually do anything wrong; she reserved the right to be irrationally grumpy with him.

"Kate! I know we haven't talked much this summer, and I'm sorry about that, but first things first. Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" she asked, completely shocked by his response.

"I heard about your case, and I wanted to see how you were holding up."

You see, that was so typically Richard Castle! He had to piss her off for being an oblivious idiot, but not technically do anything that she could legitimately hold him accountable for, and then turn into that sweet caring guy immediately. Now, she couldn't be angry with him, no matter how much she tried. She took a scarce little comfort in the fact that she could still pretend to be annoyed with him. She'd had plenty of practice.

"It's just another case Castle. I'm a big girl. I can handle it," she said as stoically as possible.

"I know you _can _handle it, and I know you _will _handle it, just like I know without a doubt that you'll solve it. But that's not what I meant and you know it." His words weren't light, and joking in the least, and that's what surprised her the most. If he was here, and had seen the case, then it wouldn't be that surprising, but he wasn't here. In his mind, it was just another case, and he had no problems being his joking self around a normal case.

"Thanks Castle, but I don't need the pep talk, and now's not the best time. I was just about to talk with the father, and I have to do it before he leaves work. So if you don't mind," she didn't feel the need to end her sentence. Her voice sounded impatient enough. She still didn't want to let it slip that she was really touched by his words.

"Okay, go get the bad guy. But please remember, I'm just a phone call away if you ever need to talk. No matter how late," and the unavoidable adorable side of him reemerged. She could only be glad for the fact that he wasn't here, and couldn't see the small grin that had snuck onto her face when she was blindsided by his words. "Until we next speak, Detective."

The click on the end of the line snapped her out of the trance she was caught in, and brought herself back to the present. She would have time to ponder the unexpected first-conversation for hours later with Lanie, but for right now, she was still very much on duty, and had a job to do.

Confidently, she strode into the office, and weaved her way through several rows of cubicles, looking for Mr. Evans' office. After she had passed what seemed like her billionth desktop bobble head, she finally found what she was looking for. Immediately she gathered that he was a fairly important person in the business. If the cubicle to private office comparison wasn't enough, the secretary would've been another selling point.

"Could you please tell Mr. Evans that Detective Beckett has some questions for him?" She said it more as a demand than as a request, and the secretary took it that way as well. She said nothing, but nodded tightly and stood up to go and deliver her message. The moment the girl closed the door, Beckett started to it, not waiting for the okay. She did, after all, have the badge for a reason.

"Detective, what a surprise. What can I do you for?" Just like his secretary, Mr. Evans sounded much too proper for her liking, and she stored the feeling of uneasiness away in her memory.

"I know I had asked about what had happened yesterday, but I need you to confirm some details, just to make sure we have our timelines straight." She gave him the reassuring answer for the same reason she backed off of Jessie's questioning earlier. She didn't want to spook him until she had some real evidence to confront him with. Besides, if she went easy, and let him get comfortable, who knows what he may let something slip?

"Sure, ask away."

"Now, what role did you play in this charity event that your company hosted?"

"I organized it, and was the main planner. I'm being considered for a promotion, and this event was my test run. That's why Natalie and I had to get there early, to make sure everything was running smoothly."

"When did it run to?"

"Well, it started at 7 pm, but like I said, I arrived twenty minutes early. It ended at 9:30, but once again, I needed to make sure that everyone left, and that the catering company was able to pack things up, and that all that night's profits got to the right people. In the end, we somehow left for home at 10 pm, and got home at around twenty after, where we both collapsed in bed. We were very tired."

"Did you see Jessie before you went to sleep?" Beckett asked a pivotal question, curious for the response.

"Of course. We got a quick synopsis of the night, she said both kids were asleep, so we paid her, she left, and we went to bed immediately." He said it plaintively, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"You didn't even check to see if your kids really were asleep in bed first?" Beckett regretted her phrasing the moment it came out of her mouth, and his response only confirmed that.

"I trusted Jessie. Besides, we were beyond exhausted, and the children are light sleepers. I assumed that with a babysitter here, not much could've happened to them. Any parent would've made the same assumption with a babysitter they've been using for almost a year now."

He sounded insulted, and why wouldn't he? Beckett, decided to back off. She had the information she needed, and now she could return to the precinct to see what the boys had found. She had left them with two strong leads. By now they were sure to have something.

"Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I'll keep in contact." With that, she left the office, and headed back to the cubicle labyrinth.

She had her suspicions, and there was an easy way to find answers to some of them. Staring at the rows and rows of tiny boxes with disgruntled people typing away at computers, she scanned the area for the one with the fewest bobble-heads in the vicinity, and headed over.

Inside was a very tall man, who didn't lose any of his height sitting in a chair. He had black hair and a very square jaw, but soft facial features, so he didn't appear intimidating at all.

"Hi, can I ask you a few questions?" She asked as casually as possible, trying to drop her daunting, cop-like tendencies and just interrogate him in a civil manner. He turned to her and grinned lightly. She tried to avoid rolling her eyes.

"Ask away."

"Were you at last night's charity event?"

"Of course, everyone was there."

"Even Mr. Evans?"

"'Course the boss had to be there. He definitely caught attention too. He had to make sure everything was going well, so he was all over the place," the guy was clearly confused about why she was asking these questions, but not nearly so curious to actually ask.

"Do you know when he left?"

"Sure I do, if only because he dumped the cleanup duty on me. Can you believe the guy bailed early? Probably to go get laid too. Just watch as he takes credit with the superiors too…"

"When did he leave? Do you know what time that was?" She pressed him urgently. This was by far, one of the most important questions, if not the most important question, that she'd asked all day.

"Just a bit before 9:15. I told the guy that it would be over in another fifteen minutes, and that he should stick it out, but he wouldn't listen."

Beckett paid no attention to all of his extra details, and just processed the information. She had to tell Ryan and Esposito about it. The man in the cubicle barely finished his sentence before she thanked him and took off, probably leaving him confused, but she didn't care.

Wait till the boys heard about this twist of events.

* * *

**Finally, the first bit of a plot twist in the case! Things start to get interesting from here on out. **

**Because you guys have been so good with reviews, I'm going to give you the name of the next chapter title. If you keep up the fantastic reviews for this one, I'll give you the next one, and so forth. Sound like a good deal? I sure hope so!**

**Chapter Nine: Trick or Treat**

**Now if that doesn't get you to review, I don't know what will... save bribing you all with lots of chocolate. **


	9. Trick or Treat

**Hey you guys! I've been loving all of the reviews I've been getting recently. You've all been fantastic; please keep it up! **

**Here's the next chapter I got for you. I need to know what you think about it, so please give me as much feedback as you can. **

**Chapter Nine: Trick or Treat**

The elevator doors slid open and Beckett headed over to Ryan and Esposito's desks. They were both glued to their respective computer screens. Esposito was scanning through a list of some kind that Beckett couldn't read from the distance, and behind him Ryan was excitedly ending a conversation from his office phone. Even over the distance, she heard the ending remarks from Ryan.

"Get out of here! You sure? Okay, thanks again. I'll call again if I need any more information. Yep, bye."

Both men turned as she neared their desks. She was excited to share her news, but on principle she checked with Ryan and Esposito first to see what they had. Her discoveries had to take a back seat to theirs because most of their findings were based on facts rather than theories that she picked up in the field. Besides, they most likely discovered the same things she did.

"Okay boys, trick or treat?"

"We are all over the treats today. What bout you Beckett? You got something good for us on the babysitter vs. parents front?" Esposito never reached Ryan's levels of excitement over new pieces of information, and got nowhere near as high as Castle's excitement levels,

"I've got a few good theories, but you first," she pushed.

"Do you want to?" Ryan asked, both out of courtesy towards his partner, and to keep Beckett in anticipation for another several seconds. The impatient team leader knew this game by now, and waited silently for their quips to end.

"Nah bro, this is all you. It was your find after all,"

"You kidding me? You found at least half of it!"

"But the best part goes to you, bro. I'll chip in when I want to."

"M'kay, if you insist," Ryan shrugged modestly before finally turning back to Beckett, who looked at them curiously, but still said nothing. He continued. "Well, Espo over here was checking a few leads on whether or not our babysitter really stuck to her usual schedule, and it turns out she made a bit of a detour."

"Detour?" Beckett had expected to get some dirt about the parents, and was surprised at the immediate mention of Jessie.

"NYU uses swipe cards for certain resident housing, as well as the library, and a few other public access buildings after 11 pm," Esposito took up what was obviously his findings. "Each time a particular student swipes their ID for access, it's recorded in a huge database. According to that, our babysitter swiped into the library at ten to seven pm."

"Did you poke around yet? She may have lent a friend her ID." Beckett asked, more out of necessity than out of distrust. Her detectives were thorough, and she didn't doubt their competence. She just had to cover all of her bases.

"I have a feeling that's not the case, seeing as someone else brought the kids home from the park," Ryan added in eagerly. Beckett turned to face him in complete astonishment.

"Someone else?"

•••

Ryan was surprised that their team leader didn't get whiplash as she turned to face him directly. Still, that was a typical Beckett reaction; by now he had come to expect them. In response to her surprise, he merely let the wide grin that he'd been suppressing take over his face. He knew what she was about to ask, so he beat her to it. He held up the print out of a video still of their John Doe for Beckett to see.

"He returned with them at exactly 6:34, and both kids seemed completely comfortable with him, so either their parents never taught them never to talk to strangers, or…"

"They know him." She cut him off, but he expected that too, and continued to talk as if she said nothing.

"Our babysitter is nowhere to be seen until 8:50, and a few minutes later, like clockwork, our mystery man makes his exit," Ryan had toned down his massive grin down to a better-controlled smirk of self pride as Beckett made the rest of the connections in her head.

"That's in the middle of our kill zone," Beckett said in shock. Clearly, whatever she had found had been pushed to the back of her mind to make way for his theory.

"And," Esposito interrupted with a comment on his own, "the babysitter did say that she never checked on them after they went to sleep. She had no clue whether or not Kayla was there afterwards"

"Any clue who this guy is?"

"Well, I called the lobby receptionist and he said that the guy had only come a couple of times before, maybe two or three times. Each time, he was let up, Jessie was babysitting."

"There's the connection. This could be our killer." Beckett said resolutely, "It's too late to go poking around now, so we'll pick this up tomorrow. Night."

Both Ryan and Esposito took this as their cue to leave, and began to gather up all the necessary files and other folders that they needed. Esposito packed up first, and gave his goodbyes quickly before escaping towards home. Ryan took a little more time to make sure he had everything he needed, just in case he felt like digging around later.

Still, that was doubtful. He knew as well as any cop out there what would happen for the remainder of everyone's night. He, Beckett, and Esposito would all go home and crash with some microwavable leftovers, needing to de-stress from the events of the day.

As a habit, Ryan liked to walk to and from work each day, if only to clear his head. He didn't need to bring his personal life into the workplace, and bringing work home was too much as well, especially if it was one of the nights Jenny came over to make sure he ate real food. As much as he appreciated and trusted his girlfriend, there was no way he could talk about the details of his cases with her.

Tonight though, Ryan hailed a cab the moment he stepped on the street. He knew there was no clearing his head tonight. He just hoped he could explain that to Jenny, who was sure to be over at his apartment right now. It was one of those nights, and he didn't know what he'd tell her.

Actually, he did. He knew exactly what he was going to say. He was just going to apologize, and say that he was worn out because of the job. It's what he always said on nights like these. And because she was so understanding, she wouldn't ask too many questions, if any. Some nights she'd keep him company while he decompressed in front of the television, other nights she's offer him a back rub to help him relax, and some nights she'd leave him to his own thoughts.

He wasn't sure which he preferred tonight.

•••

"You're telling me that after half a summer of no communication, he calls you out of the blue just to check in because of the case?" Lanie's disbelieving tone poured out of the small cell phone with incredible volume, and Beckett couldn't help but smirk.

"You want to try to dive into the mind of Richard Castle go ahead, but don't expect me to try and help you when you get lost," she quipped back to the Medical Examiner. Beckett was prepared for the age-old battle of banter, full with the normal amount of denial, insistence, and wit.

"Well I'll give Writer Boy this; oblivious as he is, he sure does know what to say."

"He's a writer, what do you expect?"

"You really think he just fed you a string of bull? Come on girl, you're smarter than that!"

"I'm not saying that it was insincere, just that he writes these beach novels specifically to catch audience attention. Of course he knows what to say, and how to exaggerate it."

Beckett grinned about the normalcy in this. She was eating some Chinese takeout leftovers on her bed, while on the phone with her friend, talking about boys. It just seemed so reminiscent of high school, and she loved it. Not even the cold, undercooked patch in the middle of her Pork Lo Mein could really bug her. She had made good process today in the case, there was nothing nagging her too much, and she made a note to look into the parents at some point already. Even though this mystery guy was probably their killer, she never overlooked something odd like that.

But for now, she just needed to relax.

"Oh shut up! The boy cares. He may be an oblivious idiot with the worst timing in the world, but that just means he's a guy. When it comes down to it, he really means it." Beckett didn't know how to respond to Lanie's frank comment. Normally the woman talked about him in the contexts of letting loose and having fun. She never brought up the idea of something genuine. So, Beckett pulled the last thing she could think of out.

"Fine, what about you? How's your love life doing, if you're so willing to give me advice on this." It sounded weak, even to her.

"Is that the best you've got? Trying to turn the tables on me? That's sad." Lanie said, followed by a few tsks. But then she continued. "Fine, I'll give you time to lick your wounds, but this conversation isn't over. Things are going fine with me. I go on dates. Saw that guy Eli last Tuesday, but I'm not too crazy 'bout it."

"Whoa, I know that tone," Beckett said in surprise, not expecting that response. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Nothing! I mean, I am considering this other guy, but I doubt it'll go anywhere. Just one of those doomed to fail scenarios, and I don't want to get into that right now."

"Fair enough," she said, appeased at Lanie's answer, but still curious about this mystery guy. Still, if she had learned anything as a cop, it's when to back off and not scare a witness. "So, what're your plans for the night?"

"No plans, just relaxing and trying to take my mind off the dead girl on my table for a few hours. You?"

"Same. Maybe watch something on TV if there's anything good."

"Well, the Sci-fi channel has a Star Wars marathon like, every other week, so if there's nothing else,"

"You know, I might just do that. Want to stay on and watch with me, or are you turning in early?"

"Actually can I take a rain check? Danny's calling. See you later?"

"In our line of work, it's inevitable. Night Lanie."

Beckett grinned, still curious about the abrupt end of their conversation. She was almost positive that Lanie wasn't interrupted by her older brother, so her thoughts immediately went to this mystery man. Deciding to confront Lanie about it later, she put her empty plate on the bedside table, burrowed under her covers, and flipped her TV to the Sci-fi channel.

•••

"You dragged me all the way out here; you'd better be paying for drinks."

Esposito turned around with a slight smile on his face at the brash voice coming from behind him. He knew that he wouldn't be able to wind down the usual way after today's events, so he walked over to a nearby bar, and called the first person he thought of. Usually after a rough day, he'd call Ryan to go out for beers, that is, if Honeymilk wasn't already taking up his time. But today, he knew better than to expect Ryan to be up for drinks.

"Of course," he responded smoothly, and offered her a chair at the bar. She took it.

"So, what's on your mind Detective?" she asked, not with impatience, but something else he couldn't name.

"Do you mind shop talk?"

"Whether I mind it or not, it interferes anyway, so go ahead," she said coolly, but he could tell that she was curious about this one's progress. "Making any leeway on the case?"

"Well for starters, she has a name now," Esposito started, and was amazed at how the smallest detail intrigued the M.E. so much. "Kayla Evans."

"Any strong leads so far?"

"We just found out that a full-time babysitter left them at some point last night to take a trip to her college library and gave the kids to some mystery guy. By the time he left, we're already half in our kill zone."

"And you think this is your guy?"

"Well, we're sure as hell not ruling him out."

The bartender came over to them at that exact moment, and they both turned away from each other, and to the counter. Lanie immediately ordered a mojito on the rocks. She didn't even pause. Esposito knew for a fact that she could drink beer with the rest of them, but this was the first time he was seeing her in a more natural setting. His natural instinct as a detective was to pay attention to everything, so he kept her in his peripherals as he ordered his beer. That smile that had been tugging at his lips before was becoming even more persistent.

"So, what were you doing before you asked me to this place?"

"Staring at a computer screen until my eyes turned into squares," Esposito said with a laugh. "What about you?"

"Well, I was cutting up a body, but then I did the smart thing and went home. Kate called and we talked for a bit, but then I got invited to a bar."

"Well, was it worth it?" He couldn't resist asking the question at the risk of looking like an idiot.

"You're a better conversationalist than the people I normally meet on the table, but we'll see…" she gave him a patented Lanie smirk that he was sure was flirtatious. He couldn't control the smile much more, and tried to cover it with a smirk of his own, but that ridiculous grin was probably still evident.

He couldn't help the string of Spanish curses that flew out of his mouth when his phone began to ring.

•••

The woman clutched the phone desperately, hiding in the door frame of the bathroom. Tearstains ran down her unmarred face, and her eyes were swollen and red.

"Come on…" she muttered under her breath, not daring to go much louder. "Pick up! Pick up! Pick up! Pick up!"

Finally the persistent ringing from the cell phone stopped, followed shortly after by the background noises of a bar.

"Esposito."

"Oh thank God I got you!" she gasped in relief, her voice breathy and faint. "Please! I need you to come here right away, it's important!"

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**Insert dramatic music here (I was thinking Beethoven's fifth, but if you've got something else playing, it's cool.) Who do you think this woman is? What relevence does she have to the case? The characters? Something else? I want to hear what you think. Also, you're going to start getting a lot more explanation for Ryan's issues, so I need to know if you have any guesses whatsoever on Ryan's backstory, what they are. It would be an enormous help to see how many clues I give out, and if they're too big or too small.**

** Also, like I said before, you've been fantastic with reviews, so as promised, here's the next chapter title:**

** Chapter Ten: Calling in Favors**


	10. Calling in Favors

**M'kay people, here's the part where I get super-grumpy at most of you (except four people) and if you want to avoid that, I totally understand, and the chapter is just below this. But for all of you still reading my author's note, I'm struggling with college applications, SATs, ACTs, AP classes, essays, make-up work, tests, crazy social crap, tough family situations, and other things I'm trying not to think about. I am about a week behind where I should be right now in everything, and I still manage to update a chapter every couple of days. Chapter eight got eight reviews and chapter nine got half of that. Believe it or not, I actually really look forward to what you all have to say, and what you think. I like getting into conversations with all of you, asking if I'm going to go more in depth into some things. It doesn't get repetitive, and I'm not asking for much. It'd be nice if you could indulge me a bit more.**

**Well, now that I've gotten that spastic screaming match over with (sorry guys, I've been super-stressed lately) here's the next chapter. Another brilliant cliff hanger is to come, and I would like your input on what you think will happen, and what is going to be said. We're getting very near to the point where you're going to find out what happened to Ryan, so now's the best time for guesses. I'm serious; all of you people who reviewed saying that you had a "guess" but wouldn't say what, let me know now or soon. I want to see how close or far off you are. **

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**Chapter Ten: Calling in Favors**

"Well yeah, he's a regular insomniac, and he does get frequent nightmares, but this? This has never happened before."

"Wait, insomniac?" Esposito questioned the last person on earth he'd ever thought he'd question, about the last person on earth he'd ever expect to be asking about. They were sitting on the red couch in the living room.

"Yeah, he can't go to sleep before midnight, and on those days he does go to sleep around that time… well, they're few and far between. Normally I like his night owl habits, but…"

She drifted off slowly, and one thought reverberated in Esposito's mind at hearing that last sentence. _Ewww! _But he quickly refocused himself, and put away all of his personal feelings about the situation so he could look at the facts objectively.

"Here you go honey, you need to rehydrate. Trust me, it'll help you to calm down." Well, so much for staying objective. Watching Lanie, who had taken time out of her night after a full day of work to help him comfort this woman was distracting enough.

After Jenny accepted the cold glass of water gratefully, the M.E. immediately took her place on the couch next to him. His best friend's girlfriend was crying to him and his… well, he really had no clue where Lanie fell in his mind. And to top it off, she was crying about his best friend. Nope, this day wasn't at all complicated enough already, this was exactly what he needed.

"Thanks. I'm sorry for calling you so late; I know you had a hard day today. Kevin didn't tell me much of anything, but he went right to sleep, so I figured," she ended ambiguously, waving her wrist to indicate the obvious connection.

"Yeah, well Ryan's our friend. Feel free to call us whenever you need," Lanie said kindly to Jenny sitting across from her. Esposito on the other hand, was struggling to keep his emotions down.

"But," Esposito felt the need to ask, "How did you get my number in the first place? You didn't call from Ryan's phone."

"After we'd been going out for a while, he gave it to me as an emergency contact, if I couldn't get a hold of him and I thought that something might be wrong."

Esposito was satisfied with the answer, as it sounded all too much like his overly-affectionate partner. Part of him even swelled with pride at the fact that he, before his Ryan's entire family, was the first emergency contact. But most of his thoughts were consumed with anger that he didn't know so many things about his closest friend.

"You say that he's had frequent nightmares in the past?"

"He still does. And before you ask me when the last one was before tonight, I can tell you it was yesterday."

"As in, yesterday yesterday?" Esposito was shocked. He had thought he knew close to everything about his partner, and now there was so much that he didn't know. Despite his pathetic attempts to compartmentalize, he couldn't keep the shock and hurt out of his voice. Lanie must've picked up on it, because he felt a small hand rubbing his back sympathetically.

"Yeah, but normally he'll just wake up a little jumpy and disoriented. He wouldn't refuse to wake up, and that reaction, I've never seen him react that way. Just… do you know what's going on, or what I should do?"

"Well, if this is regular then I could smack a Nightmare Disorder on this, but it seems too simple. Usually ND is also linked to trauma-related coping disorders like PTSD," Lanie took over when she recognized her cue. Automatically, she jumped into the professional mode so easily.

"Something tells me I won't like those acronyms," Jenny mumbled neutrally enough. "Couldn't it be something like Night Terrors? That's a similar reaction to what I saw."

When they had come in, it was horrible to watch. It was as if he was trapped in whatever nightmare world was stuck in his head, and unable to wake up. His hands clawed at the bed with white palms, and he kept thrashing his head from side to side. The only consolation in any of this was that he was modest enough to wear pajamas of some kind to bed, but even that wasn't too much comfort. Esposito hated to see his partner in this state of utter vulnerability.

"I'm not too fond of night terrors for my diagnosis here. They are completely unconscious, and by the time the person wakes up, they have no memory of what they were screaming about. Jumpy behavior suggests a memory of whatever he saw." Lanie rebutted as kindly as possible. "On the other hand, frequent nightmares are congruent with PTSD."

Esposito completely lost his professional attitude in a moment of staring upsettedly at the Doctor. Finally, he shook himself back into his role, as a detective. This may not be a case, but it sure needed the eyes of one.

"Well, are you sure?" Jenny asked shakily, unwilling to accept the idea.

"Did he say anything in his sleep, or give any indication as to what was going on in his mind?" Esposito asked seriously. He already had a good guess as to what his partner might've said, but he had to make sure.

"Yeah," she said slowly and carefully, as if a single wrong pronunciation would hurt him. "He said something that sounded like an apology, or bits of broken excuses. He never really finished what he wanted to say,"

"Is there a name, or a place, or anything else you can give me?" He knew exactly what she was going to say, even before he asked the question.

"Uh-huh. It was as if he was talking to some girl," she said in a sad voice. Most of it was because of what was happening to Ryan, but he could just guess that part of it was jealousy over this mysterious, new woman. "He called her Ashleigh."

•••

"Evening Detective. Whatever could've possessed you to call so late?" He asked jovially, though even he heard the sleep creeping into his voice.

He knew that police weren't the best at introductions, or pleasantries over the phone for that matter. But normally there was a brief acknowledgement of the other person. This time however, there was no introduction.

"Listen bro," the man got straight down to the nitty-gritty. "I need to ask a huge favor of you."

•••

Kate Beckett fiddled absentmindedly with the last bite of leftover lo mein on her chopsticks, and stared at the small television screen emptily. When Luke was volunteering to be the one to blow up the death star, her phone inevitably started to ring.

"Beckett," she groaned in anticipation when she picked up. It was close to midnight, and she was at Kayla's crime scene before the crack of dawn this morning. If she had to deal with any more murder tonight, she would scream. Normally, her tolerance was fairly high, but after Kayla, Ryan, and Castle, she was beat.

"Hey girl, we've got a 911."

Beckett hadn't expected Lanie's voice to be the one she met with when she answered the phone, but her detective skills already kicked in, and her mind was beginning to shift into gear.

"Case or otherwise?"

"It's Ryan."

Beckett nearly followed the movie cliché of dropping her phone at the words. She had been worried this morning when Ryan passed out, but the day continued almost normally. How could she not assume everything was better? Especially when there was a little girl's murder in the mix.

"Do you need me there?"

"We've got the situation under control, but just thought you'd need to know."

"Tell me everything, then."

"Bout twenty minutes ago, Jenny got freaked out because Ryan was reacting harshly to a dream she couldn't wake him from. She called Esposito out of fear. We rushed over, where he seemed to have calmed down a bit, but not by much. I couldn't wake him up any better than she could, but this is far from my specialty."

"Oh… kay?" Beckett asked slowly. Despite everything, a small smile appeared on her face. "How did you get there?"

"Esposito called me, and picked me up."

"But you're in the opposite direction," Beckett's smile widened even more. Neither of the boys would've gotten upset with her or Lanie for the conversation switch into normal. It was a typical cop coping method: gallows humor and normal routines. It was easier that way, safer that way.

"I was in the area when he called, just a walk in the city,"

"You do know you're trying to lie to a cop?"

"Oh shut up!"

Kate grinned at her friend's defensive voice. Already her mind was making associations between facts, and then her Castle-tainted imagination, filled in the rest.

"Anyway," Lanie exaggerated each vowel to suggest that the previous conversation was over, and that there was more to be said for what was happening. Beckett sobered immediately. "My guess is that Ryan is going to need as much normalcy as possible when he does wake up. Odds are he will be coming into work tomorrow, so watch out for him."

"What about Esposito?" Even though she was the team leader, and they were a group, she was aware that his partner was much closer to him, and would be able to look out for him.

"Said he needed to take tomorrow off. He's going to stay here 'till Ryan wakes up, but then he said there was something he needed to do."

"Now?" Even through this mysterious situation with Ryan, she was still acutely aware of Kayla, and the case she needed to solve. She wasn't sure if she could afford to lose another team member, especially when the last one left standing was clearly distracted by something.

"Said it was only a day, and he'd be back soon. You know he wouldn't leave a case hanging if it wasn't important."

Beckett knew that Lanie was right. Esposito would never take a day off from work in the middle of a case if it wasn't absolutely essential. She decided to refocus on the main matter again.

"What about Jenny?"

"Poor girl was scared out of her wits. It was lucky I got her to go home. Who knows what he might do again tonight?"

"Think he'll relapse?"

"Honey, I couldn't wake him up. Most kinds of sleep, that doesn't happen. There's something significant about that nightmare. Almost anything is possible."

•••

It was morning, he had driven for almost two hours last night, had gotten next to no sleep, which was entirely his own fault, and he had next to no clue what was going on. But that wasn't what worried him; as far as he was concerned, he was nervous for no reason whatsoever. There was something different recently, and no one would tell him the whole story. Whatever was going on though, he kept getting the odd feeling that he had done something wrong.

The chair that he was so comfortable with felt awkward, and unfamiliar around him. The entire precinct was exactly the same, yet everything was totally different. The atmosphere wasn't at all what he remembered.

Actually, that wasn't completely true. The atmosphere wasn't what he remembered leaving, but he had experienced this kind of ambiance at the Twelfth before. When he first started shadowing Beckett, things were almost as nose-to-the-grindstone, by-the-rules as they were now. Maybe it was the case, but he wasn't sure.

"Castle!" The shocked voice almost made him jump, but he forced his nerves to relax, and play it cool. He had left for the Hamptons to get over her, and now he couldn't show his hand by letting slip how little his plan had worked.

"Good morning Detective Beckett. How's your summer been?"

"What're you doing here?" She avoided the question entirely, and for now he relented.

"That is a fantastic question that I had hoped you could answer for me."

"What?" Of course her eyebrows had to crinkle together in that adorable way. She always got that little crinkle when she was confused and equally exasperated.

"Esposito called to ask a favor of me, and step on the case while he's gone. But other than that, I barely know what it's about, what's going on, why Esposito's vanishing, and why no one will tell me."

"You're telling me that you drove for two hours from your beach house, for the purpose of helping out on a case you know nothing about, only to leave again in a matter of hours? How stupid do you think I am?"

"It's true! I didn't ask questions because there seemed to be something else going on. I just hoped someone would tell me when I got here."

He watched Beckett staring at him, seemingly deep in thought. He saw that look many times while she stared at the murder board, waiting for inspiration to strike her, but never was it directed at him. He became awkward under her gaze, and began to squirm slightly. If only he could read minds.

"Fine, the case is on the murder board, and I'll fill you in on the rest on the way there. You've got two minutes before I head out to talk to the babysitter."

Gleefully, he ran over the crowded whiteboard, and began to skim as quickly and accurately as he could. He knew the grim outline of the case, but the fact of the matter was that all he knew was her age, and how she was found.

During most cases, he was able to ease the tension with some light humor and friendly conversations, but this was one of those times when he'd need to tread carefully, for fear of slipping into the gray zone between "wiseass" and "jackass."

He was still nervous, and he still had the feeling that he'd done something wrong. The tension between them was much too reminiscent of the time after he told Beckett what he'd found on her mother's murder for things to be okay. But maybe he could make things right.

•••

He thrashed wildly in a desperate attempt to escape. His head whipping back and forth. Clumps of short, sweat-drenched hair splayed out wildly across his forehead. His chest heaved from taking such deep gulps of air, as if each breath was labored. Terror gripped his every feature.

And his eyes shot open. He didn't give himself time to acknowledge his surroundings, or adjust his sight to the dark. He simply flung himself off the bed, and collapsed into a heap on the floor. His hands immediately flew to his head to grab his throbbing temples. He might as well just be a little kid again.

"Kev?"

The soft, concerned voice made him tense in surprise, even though he wasn't sure if it was just the memory of yesterday, or if it was actually being said at the moment. It could honestly have been either, and he wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. All he knew was that someone had spoken, and he had panicked.

Immediately he turned to face the sound, and threw himself backwards as far as he could before his back roughly met the wooden bedside table. It took several moments before his brain made the connections that said it was his partner standing behind him, worry in every feature.

He could've sworn under his breath if he wasn't still shaking horribly from the after-effects of the experience. He didn't want Esposito to see him like this. He didn't want anyone to see him like this.

"What time is it?" He couldn't think of what else to ask, and his partner's face switched from concern, to confusion. He was grateful for the change.

"Four in the morning." Esposito's voice was cautious and wary, but Ryan didn't pay attention. He just kept his eyes down, and to the side, and nodded quickly.

"What're you doing here?"

"You gotta tell me bro."

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**What'd I tell you? Huge, right? Wait until next chapter, that's when things start to get interesting. What can I say? Championship Vinyl, you called it; our mystery woman was in fact Jenny. Applause to you. **

**Like I said before, if you guys review, I reward you, but last chapter's reviews were so scarce that you don't get the next chapter title yet. Shame, it's a really good one. Review a lot and you'll get it sooner. **


	11. A Time for Answers

**Here it is, and this chapter is the beginning of the explanations. A lot of things are going to begin to make sense now. Some of you have been guessing who Ashleigh is, and I promise you'll find out in this chapter. **

**Sorry for completely getting down your guy's throats last chapter. I'm just majorly stressed out and took it out on all of you. I would like reviews, but I'll try hard not to demand them from here on out. **

**So, without further ado I will present the much-anticipated eleventh chapter.**

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**Chapter Eleven: A Time for Answers**

Esposito nearly jumped out of his skin at his partner's intense reaction. As a cop, you have to have your head in order. Didn't matter what emotions you harbored, you couldn't lose your head. He'd seen his partner through tons of passionate moments; his proudest, his happiest, his most concerned, and on those unbelievably rare occasions, his angriest. But he'd never seen him so terrified in his life.

He lost his head. Of that much, Esposito was absolutely certain.

It was a bit perturbing to watch too. His best friend on the ground, a wreck, and he had no clue what was going on. Even as he watched the man collect himself, and attempt to gloss over the moment, the image of his terrified face was still burned in his brain. He wasn't going to ignore it anymore.

"What time is it?"

The question seemed so out of the blue, he wanted to ask him to repeat the question. But he was better than that. He had heard, and he was going to follow the conversation out, despite the tangent his partner would try to take, and how he wouldn't let him.

"Four in the morning."

"What're you doing here?"

Now there was a question for the ages. What was he doing here? What was his partner not telling him? What horrible secret was he harboring? Who was this mysterious Ashleigh, and what did she do to him? Why was it only coming out now? He had no clue what he was doing here, because he had no clue what was going on with his best friend, and he was sick of it.

"You gotta tell me bro."

"I dunno what you're talking about."

"You just looked like you were being tortured," Esposito pressed more urgently. They had to talk about this.

"It's no big deal," Ryan replied with a nervous laugh. "So I had a dream. It's nothing. I don't want to talk about it."

"What if Martin Luther King had said that? I kind of had a dream… but I don't want to talk about it." Esposito added with a hint of humor. Ryan cracked a small smile too, but it was far from genuine.

"It's nothing, I swear."

"Jenny didn't seem to think so," he felt bad for using the girlfriend card, but he was getting desperate. This was too big not to address. "She was terrified when she called me."

His partner averted his eyes once again and focused on the floorboards, refusing to say anything.

"Who's Ashleigh?"

Ryan looked up again in pain, but still defiant.

"Come on man, you can't say it's not important because you've mentioned her four times in the past twenty-four hours, and none of them are nostalgic."

"Lay off dude, nothing's going on."

"You're my partner; that means I'm with you till the wheels fall off. So don't give me that bullshit."

Ryan suddenly laughed, even though it sounded hollow and cynical. "No way you just pulled that line on me, man. Last time I gave you that, and you just blow me off with some excuse." There was a long pause before he spoke again. "Sides, there's nothing for you to back me up on."

Esposito wanted to be insulted, but he knew the minute that he had pulled that line out that it was a bad idea. He probably deserved the disparaging air quotes that Ryan had put around the "back me up." No matter what his intentions were all those months ago and no matter how much common sense the guy had, it was bound to feel like a brush off to Ryan. Esposito just didn't want to risk his partner's badge helping him pick up his past ghosts. It wasn't worth it, and they weren't Ryan's demons anyway, they were his.

Then again, that's probably Ryan's reasoning now.

"Whatever bro. But whenever you're ready to talk, I'm here. Till then, I'm thinking 'bout taking the day off. I've been up all night."

•••

"So, where does the PTSD come in?"

The question caught Beckett completely off guard. The Ryan complication had not been brought up, even though she was sure that it was Esposito's motivation for missing work. She was hoping to avoid mentioning it. She thought knew Ryan and each time this supposed trauma was mentioned she started to doubt that fact more and more.

"What do you mean?" That's smart. Play dumb; he'll totally drop the subject. 'Cause it's not like Castle has a problem with not knowing when to back off.

"It's not mentioned on the board, and Esposito asked me some questions about it the other day. Do we think the victim had PTSD? Because I don't know where that conclusion came up based on the evidence."

Kate sighed. He deserved the truth; the man had gone out of his way for a friend without any reason or explanation, trustingly waiting for someone to give him answers. Had it been her, she'd be going insane with worry right about now.

"Okay, here's the thing. No one in the case who we think had PTSD,"

"Then why did Espo…"

"We think Ryan has it," she said quietly, and avoided looking to the left of her when Castle suddenly sat up straight in his seat, and turned to stare at her. Like many times before when an awkward comment had been made while in the car, she gripped the steering wheel tighter, and continued to stare straight in front of her.

"Excuse me?"

•••

Castle knew during that phone conversation that something was up with Ryan. He didn't understand what it was at the time, but it seemed unlikely that such a drastic mental disorder was the cause. The guy was so stable: he was in a loving relationship, he had a job he liked with good friends, he took days off for family holidays, he had a sense of humor. No, Castle would never have suspected that Ryan had Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.

While he had begun to shadow the homicide team because of Beckett, he quickly learned that it wasn't just one person, but the team that made them great. Beckett, Ryan, Esposito, Montgomery, Lanie, sometimes even Perlmutter. These people weren't just a team that worked together; they acted like a family, they always had each other's backs. That's why they were so good, and that's why he knew he had chosen the right people for his next series.

He was shocked when he later realized that he was being accepted into the family too. What was even more shocking was when he noticed that he started seeing them all as family too. It wasn't just about Beckett anymore; he cared deeply about all of them, and he didn't know how to take this news.

"Excuse me?" He watched Beckett purse her lips together and tap her thumb nervously on the steering wheel. Obviously, this was upsetting everyone, and would explain why everything here was so tense. "On what grounds?"

"After we reached out to the parents, Ryan rushed off and Esposito found him just before he passed out in the gym. Then last night he was having nightmares that he couldn't wake up from. Lanie loosely labeled it."

"You think something in the case triggered it?" they had a few minutes of car ride left before they had to go interrogate the babysitter. He wanted as much information as he could.

"Okay, you've got theories. Let me hear them." Beckett said back, probably knowing him well enough to expect crazy guesses, but this time was different. It was Ryan, and he couldn't think about the wild ones, just the serious ones.

"Well, if his first reaction was after reaching out to the parents maybe it had something to do with that. But he's seen a thousand of those… it had to be specific to those parents, or that situation. Was there something out of the ordinary for that particular meeting?"

"Not really, nothing that's unexpected for parent's reactions… except," Beckett trailed off thoughtfully

"Except?" Castle pushed her to continue, and share her theory. Even though she never voiced her opinions if she wasn't sure, he wanted every possibility. He resented that he had missed a second of this case, as well as the fact that he couldn't stay for more than a few days at most.

"It's nothing, just… the mother was unusually persistent that she kept her maiden name," Beckett said slowly, but Castle didn't wait to follow up on the small detail.

"So either she's a _very _independent mother, or…"

"She's unhappy in her marriage!" Both of them said at the same time. Castle suddenly wasn't sure which mystery they were solving through.

"But that doesn't tell us anything." Beckett followed up disappointedly. Both of them sagged in their seats.

"Well, the case is what's impacting Ryan now," Castle reasoned as he saw the car pull up to their destination: NYU. "This mystery trauma is in the past, and probably long over. Esposito's dealing with Ryan. What we can do to help is solve Kayla's murder."

"You're right. Did you read about our mystery replacement sitter?" Beckett said, trying to get back on focus as she headed towards the student housing offices.

"Yeah, it seems much too easy. Besides, there're all these small…"

"Unanswered questions, I know! It's infuriating." Beckett finished his sentence again, and he had to grin a little at how well they worked together, even after this long.

"Like, even though the coworker isn't our killer, what isn't she saying?"

"What's up with the extra hours the Mrs. Dawson is making everyone pull at the bank?"

"Do the parents know about our invisible sitter?"

"Why did Mr. Evans lie about when they got home from the charity event?"

"Are they really in an unhappy marriage?"

"Why are the kids such light sleepers?"

"Huh?" Castle was thrown off guard by the question. He saw a tiny note on the board about that, but didn't pay it much attention. Beckett's mention of it surprised it.

"I can understand people being light sleepers, even kids, but think about it. Everyone being too afraid to open the door and peek in because they might wake up? And both of them? How often is it that two kids under the same roof are abnormally light sleepers, and to the same degree? It's everyone's explanation for not checking on these kids, so why are they such light sleepers?"

Castle thought about that, but couldn't come up with anything better than wild theories. Alexis, where he usually drew insight about kids from, was always set with a perfect biological clock. She woke up to an alarm at 7 every morning, went to bed at 10:30 almost every night. He never needed to worry about her being too heavy or too light of a sleeper, and the girl hadn't been woken by a nightmare since she was seven.

They didn't get to brainstorm the question though, because he turned around, and found Beckett talking to the rather portly woman at the student housing desk.

"Yes, I'm looking for a Jessie Palmer. Do you know where I'd find her?"

One look at the badge and the woman immediately jumped back into the computer, searching urgently for the name.

"Ms. Palmer lives on the Gramercy Green. If you want, I could take you there."

"That would be great, thanks."

•••

Beckett knocked on the door impatiently, trying not to be too aware of the best-selling author hanging over her shoulder. She had finally gotten used to not having Castle hanging around her all the time and it was weird to have him back.

The door opened slowly to show a surprised babysitter. Beckett decided that the best way to go about this was not to coddle the girl. She knowingly lied to a cop and now she had the evidence. It was time to get to the truth.

"You lied to me Jessie. You said that you watched the kids all night but you didn't. Someone else watched them from 6:30 to 8:50, and we were told that you know him. So you'd better start telling me the truth."

The girl looked nervously from Castle, to Beckett, and then back to Castle. Behind her, she heard him whisper, "I'd listen to her." She chewed on her bottom lip, before opening the door up all the way.

"Come on in."

•••

"Thanks, but I'm not here for pleasure. I need to ask you a couple of questions." Esposito said to the woman offering to let him in her house.

"What, am I under arrest for murder? Come on Javier, what's this about?" The humor that had managed to weave into her curious voice wasn't lost on Esposito. Soon, that humor would be completely gone. He wasn't sure if he should build up to it slowly, or just break the news quickly and as painlessly as possible. After a second of deliberation, he chose the latter.

"Tessa, it's about Kev. There's something up that he won't tell me, but I need to know."

"Can't promise I'll answer."

"You're his sister, and he's seriously in trouble. Please, I just want to help him."

He stared at the woman in front of him, and she met his gaze equally. The woman looked so much like her brother. The ice blue eyes, the dimples, and the pale skin all reminded him of Ryan. But she was taller, her lips were thinner, her face was more pixie-like, her hair was jet black and not soft brown, and her features softer. Maybe because of the similarity in age, she was the closest to his partner. Whenever the guy needed to talk to family, he went to Tessa way before he went to Beth, or his mother. If anyone knew who Ashleigh was, odds are it was Tessa.

"What do you want to know?" Her voice was cautious and guarded, but concerned. Inwardly, he sighed in relief. He wasn't promised answers, but there was hope.

"Did Ryan ever know someone named Ashleigh? Maybe when he was young?"

Suddenly she took several steps backward, and her expression changed to one of worry. "Where did you hear that name?"

"Ryan's been really distracted lately, and mentioned this girl a couple of times. I need to know who he is,"

"I can't." The answer was immediate, and she looked mournful with a hint of worry, nowhere near as freaked out as Ryan had looked this morning. She kept backing away from him as if he was about to attack her, and even though he wasn't sure, it looked as if she was shaking lightly. Esposito was horrified, but tried not to let it show. Who could this girl possibly be that she could cause such a reaction from so many people?

"Tessa, please," he slowly began to close the distance. Her back was to the living room wall now, and he moved even more carefully, so as not to scare the girl off. Even though he'd spent a few holidays with her, and Ryan's family, he wasn't too close with Tessa. "It's just me. It's just Javi. I'm worried about Kevin, because he's not okay, but I can't do anything unless I know what's haunting him."

She shook her head vigorously, refusing to meet him in the eye. He sighed sadly, his heart breaking for Ryan, and his entire family.

"Tessa, look at me," finally, she looked up to meet his eyes, and he did something he rarely did. It was quiet to the point where he barely heard himself but she heard it and somehow, she seemed to understand how uncharacteristic it was for him. He begged. "Please."

His voice sounded pitiful, and he probably looked even worse, but something got through to her. She gulped slowly, and nodded once. It was barely perceptible, but it was there.

"I was nine when it happened. And I don't even know what it was. One morning she just disappeared, and no one was allowed to talk about her." Her voice cracked and shook but he committed each word to memory, not daring to let go of a single one.

"Tessa, who was she?" She sighed, and broke her gaze for a minute, shaking her head and rubbing her neck uncomfortably before looking up once again.

"She was our sister."

* * *

**So for all of you who had suggested that Ashleigh might be his sister, you guys were right. I applaud you! One thing I want to know is how you guessed that so quickly. Did I give too many hints to that, because I'm worried that I gave too much away too early.**

**You guys reviewed much more last chapter, so I'll give you the next chapter's title:**

**Chapter Twelve: The Truth Comes Ou****t**


	12. The Truth Comes Out

**I'm sooo sorry guys! I've been so overworked lately that I've gotten a grand total of six hours of sleep this week. Today is the first day that I'm actually done before 3:30 am. I had wanted to update yesterday, but I just didn't have the chance. **

**But, I've gotten a ton of fabulous reviews and I'd love more if you've got more to say for this chapter. Can't wait to hear from you!**

**Chapter Twelve: The Truth Comes Out**

Jessie gestured for them to take a seat. Beckett hesitantly sat down on the desk chair, while Castle awkwardly took a seat on the bed. She looked up at the nervous college student who was pacing in her room.

"I'm sorry; I just thought you'd tell Mr. Evans or Mrs. Dawson. And they wouldn't trust me if they knew,"

"Knew about what Jessie?" Beckett pushed more forcefully, trying to get this game of cat and mouse over with.

"I have courses that I'm taking, college courses. And I needed to study for these huge tests that're this week. It's like the equivalent of midterms. And I love them both, but I can't be the nanny for the rest of my life, and this _is _my life. I need to give it time too."

"Who watched Aaron and Kayla?" Castle pressed harder.

"I just needed study time but I thought that their parents wouldn't understand. So I asked my boyfriend to come over a couple of times where I could keep an eye on them, and see how good he was with them while I worked at the table. But they got too loud and this was my last weekend, so I asked him to cover for me while I went to the library for a review session." Her pacing was getting faster and more nervous.

"I was responsible about it, and Mrs. Dawson has been making me work extra hours, and I was pressed for time. You have to understand, I'd been working at least three hours later than I should be. She said it'd only take a week tops. Three weeks later, I'm still pulling late hours."

Beckett could hear the gears in her mind whirring. There was more to this story. But first things first, she needed to find the boyfriend. "Your boyfriend, I need his name and how to get in contact with him."

"He didn't do anything wrong! He's a good guy, I swear."

"We can't rule him out until we talk to him. He's not in trouble Jessie, but he will be if we can't find him."

She stared at her warily, trying to decide whether or not to believe her. "Nick Porter. That's his name. He lives at Hayden Hall… but you won't find him."

Beckett stood up suspiciously and moved over to the babysitter, effectively ending her pacing, "Why not Jessie?"

"Yesterday he called me and said there was some family crisis, and he had to head back home. He said he'd be there for a couple of days."

"What kind of crisis?" Castle asked curiously.

"He didn't say, just that he'd be back tomorrow or the next day."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"Globe, it's some small city in Arizona. He said he was going to take me there after the testing to go meet his parents, but after this, who knows how plans have changed?"

Beckett turned to Castle as subtly as she could. Both of them had upset expressions on their faces. While they had taken some pretty long road trips, Arizona was a bit too far to travel for their suspect. Especially if he said he'd be back soon. Underneath her breath she whispered a frustrated "damn" to Castle, who kept a straight face.

"Is there anything else?"

"Actually yes," Castle intervened, wanting to join the interrogation. Before he continued, Beckett already knew what he was going to ask. It was next on her questions list also. "You said something about pulling extra hours for the past three weeks. Could you tell us about that?"

"Sure. As a political consultant, Mr. Evans comes home around 8 most nights, with some late-nighters. Mrs. Dawson on the other hand, is a banker and should have easier hours. She should get home around 6:30 every night, but she works hard, so the parents alternate between who comes home first. But recently, Mrs. Dawson has been asking me to put in a ton of extra hours each time she's supposed to come home first. It's extra pay, but it was seriously cutting in on my work time."

Castle grinned slightly in the way that told Beckett he was making the same connections she was. He stepped behind her slightly and whispered into her ear, "Three weeks; same amount of time she's been dumping a lot of extra work on her coworker Pam."

"Maybe we should talk to Ms. Linden again, see if she's more forthcoming," Beckett murmured back to him before turning to Jessie again. "Please contact me the moment you hear from your boyfriend. He should expect a visit from me soon."

•••

His sister. Ashleigh was his freaking sister. Esposito knew that Ryan had always been close with both of his sisters, and was shocked that he'd never heard about this mysterious third. And there was something more going on. Ryan had been apologizing to her about something. He was scared of something. There had to be some other part of the story that Tessa either didn't know, or hadn't said.

"Tessa please, if there's anything else that you know about her disappearance I need you to tell me. Something about the investigation, something about the events leading up to or following her disappearance. I don't know what I'm looking for, you have to help me."

The woman still looked upset, but he had managed to sit her on the couch, and make her a cup of tea. He could still navigate her kitchen since he'd been here last. Even though his mind was rebelling against itself, his focus had to be Tessa who was shaken, from talking about her sister. That's why he put up a pot and made the tea.

"She was five years old. The investigation was short; they never found the guy; we never saw her again. They never made a ransom or anything."

"Which suggests it was for some twisted pleasure purpose," he said to himself, not wanting to upset her any more than she already was.

"Why were you scared to tell me about it?" Esposito knew it was blunt, but if he could answer that question, then he might be able to figure out a lot more. Most people would be upset looking back, but not afraid. There was a story there, and maybe the reason for her fear was the same as Ryan's fear.

"I'm just not used to talking about it," the answer was too quick.

"Please, I'm asking for your brother's sake. I need the truth. There's nothing to be afraid of," He held up his open hands to prove a point. For a moment she stared at them, before sighing, taking another sip of tea, and then starting to explain.

"We weren't sure who was hit the hardest; Mom or Dad. Mom cried every night for weeks afterward, but she never wanted to seem weak in front of us. She didn't know we heard her crying. Dad on the other hand, didn't let anyone talk about her, and he enforced it strictly. He burned all of her pictures, pretty much destroyed all evidence of her existence. He didn't want to be reminded."

"Where is your father now?" Esposito had never seen Ryan's father at any holiday, and had never heard him mentioned. He hadn't really thought about the strange absence of a father figure, but the more he thought about it, the more it bugged him.

"Mom left him about a month after Ashleigh's disappearance. We haven't seen him since."

"You never spent weekends, or holidays, or other days with him?" Esposito became more suspicious of the entire situation.

"No, we didn't."

Her definitive answer to the simple question was Esposito's indication that she didn't want to talk about it anymore. There were still pieces missing, but now he had a lot more information. He would be able to confront Ryan with it, and hopefully get some real answers.

•••

"You're not going to accuse me of murder again, are you?" Ms. Linden asked bitterly. Beckett didn't blink when she replied that she would not. And for his own part, Castle sat in the corner, and watched. It would be weird and probably intimidating to introduce a new cop type figure into the mixture. So unless it was urgent, he was staying on the sidelines.

When they got back to the precinct, he saw that Ryan was already at his desk, working away on the boyfriend's story, and seeing if he could be sure that they wouldn't have to reach out to TSA. The familiar image seemed skewed to Castle for two main reasons; the first reason was Esposito's disappearance. It was like opening a lunchbox and finding two slices of bread, but no sandwich material inside; it was incomplete. The partners were always together.

The other anomaly was the new information that Castle was trying to process. Ryan was traumatized somehow. Even if it wasn't definitively PTSD, there were symptoms that were certainly congruent with heavy duty trauma. And yet, looking at him, he still appeared to be the same funny, mellow, loyal guy that he was before. There were no sudden signs of trauma that screamed out to him. Besides the heavy bags under his eyes, there was nothing that would suggest a troubled past. It was hard to imagine Ryan with one.

However, Castle had yet to see Ryan actually lose it. Esposito had seen it twice, as had Lanie. Beckett had seen it once, and the Captain had very detailed accounts. All he had to go off of was the diluted wisps of stories.

He remembered one time when he explained to Beckett that traumas often can be the cause of people's fixation with the macabre. _"Some people become vampires. Some people become cops." _It actually scared him about how true that might be. When he started shadowing Beckett, he focused on her exclusively. It was about her methods, and her strengths, and her motivations, and her backstory. While he had begun to widen his horizons to include Ryan, Esposito, Lanie, and Captain Montgomery into his analysis, he would never have suspected this.

And where did the case fit in as a trigger?

"Mrs. Dawson had been asking you and many others to work later hours for the past three weeks, but you had given an indication that she gave you more work than the others. Why is that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she was wary, and why wouldn't she be? Beckett did start out much more to-the-point than usual. But he was eager to watch this play out, because Beckett was good, and she always got what she needed from her witnesses.

"I think you do. I was going through your work records. I don't have to tell you that Mrs. Dawson was leaving the office much earlier than she usually does for the past three weeks. Only it doesn't make sense because her babysitter has been pulling extra hours on the days when she's supposed to be home early. You were her friend Pam; you should know what's going on."

"I'm not supposed to talk about it until it's finished," the slip was so obvious, that Castle would've thought that it was fake, had he not been there to witness it.

"Talk about what Ms. Linden? Because a little girl is dead. You can either start talking, or you can spend the night in lock-up for obstruction of justice. Your choice."

"Alright," The woman sighed, defeated. "Alright already. She needed the extra time because she was sneaking to her lawyer's each day. She didn't say why, but she didn't want anyone knowing, so she dumped a lot of her work on me, and asked me to cover for her."

Castle sat up meaningfully in his seat, and met Beckett's eyes when she turned to look at him. This was leaning towards an unhappy marriage if he'd ever seen one. Now he knew that Beckett wasn't about to beat around the bush anymore. The next step would be to confront the parents separately. And hopefully, the boyfriend would turn up, so they could either clear his name, or solve the case.

•••

Ryan worked on looking for the boyfriend, trying to lose himself in work without losing himself in the case. This was supposed to be just another body, but he wasn't dumb. He saw the connections; there were more than even Beckett knew about. Not that he knew it for sure; all he had were hunches that kept coming closer to being proved right. Until he had actual evidence though, he couldn't tell Beckett his theories. He wasn't Castle; he couldn't just come up with crazy ideas without having to back them up.

So he focused on the boyfriend. So far, everything seemed fine; he bought tickets for a roundtrip, so he wasn't blatantly escaping from anything. His parents confirmed that a childhood friend of his was in a drunk driving incident, which was why he went down to visit.

His behavior seemed absolutely normal, and most killers uncomfortable enough to try to get out of the state aren't comfortable enough to come back after a few days. All of it suggests that he's just – as Castle would put it – the red herring.

And yet, he had a large gap in their timeline, a portion of their kill zone, and plenty of opportunity. There was only one thing this entire case lacked. A motive. Then again, despite the sex crime aspect of it, there was no possible motive for that level of brutality.

The cruelty put into her death would be so unnecessary if it was exclusively a sex crime. Same as robberies, sex offenders rarely went through the sadistic kill; they mainly took what they wanted, quickly covered up their tracks, then left. A single shot, maybe even a knife wound would make sense, but the battered body, and bump on the head suggested a passionate desire to kill. A motive.

All of his extra energy had gone into finding that motive, but he knew that he wouldn't find one. What horrible thing could a little girl do to inflict that kind of wrath? It had taken him years to answer that question; there was nothing she could do to make her deserve that torture. There was no way she was to blame.

His treacherous mind dragged him back to his own memories of the past, ricocheting off biases and fears long buried. His anger flared slightly, and he tilted his head down to avoid attracting attention. His hands immediately clenched into fists and it took all of his strength to unball one hand to rub the bridge of his nose.

_Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! _He swore to himself. He had to focus on Kayla, and not get sucked down into the past again. He knew he was beginning to sound like Beckett, but that family, that little boy, deserved justice for Kayla's death. What they shouldn't have to deal with on top of their grief is a detective who loses his head over his own past; a past that he only remembers in bits and pieces.

But there was just something about it all… something he was sure was linked to the case.

Something that he was beginning to remember after all those years.

* * *

**Everything will be explained soon enough, I promise!**

** And, like I said, you were fantastic with reviews last chapter, so here's the next couple of chapter titles (yep, a ton of reviews and I'm very eager to divulge information):**

** Chapter Thirteen: The Calm**

** Chapter Fourteen: Before**

** Chapter Fifeen: The Storm.**

** Be sure to review and let me know what you think! I can't wait to hear from you.**


	13. The Calm

****

**So, today (if you can call it that because it was at like, 3 am) I was more or less rejected for the first time (never put myself out there before) and I'm kinda bummed. After all, I am in love with my best friend. **

**Chapter Thirteen: The Calm**

Esposito was very thorough, and talked to his other sister, Beth, before he turned around and headed back for the city. He didn't make the trip down to Philadelphia for her like he made the trip to Westchester, Connecticut for Tessa. He decided that it'd be enough to call her. After all, she was seven years old at the time of the incident.

Beth had said more of the same thing that Tessa had told him; that she disappeared without a trace and that they never spoke of her again. She had less of a reaction than Tessa and Ryan had, but she still sounded tenser and more nervous over the phone.

At this rate, he should get back to the precinct by around 4:30, in time to get a couple of hours in if he wanted. Part of him felt guilty for deserting Kayla and wanted to help as much as he could, but another louder part of him wondered if he could work two feet away from his partner without demanding answers of him. Now, with everything he knew it was near impossible to keep silent. It was like staring at a murder board, and knowing that the answer was staring you in the face if only you could find it.

He still had yet to figure out the connection between Kayla and Ashleigh drastic enough to trigger Ryan's reaction. Sure, they were both young, both had the stamp of innocence, but other than that, there wasn't anything drastic enough to cause that reaction. If any case would trigger it, he would've put money on Angela Candela's kidnapping, not Kayla's murder.

There had to be something else.

•••

Beckett and Castle had planned it perfectly. Separately, she and the writer ushered Mrs. Dawson into one interrogation room while Ryan escorted Mr. Evans into the adjoining interrogation room. They were very careful not to let one parent see the other. Beckett didn't see any advantage in tipping her hand by letting them know that their spouse was in the next room. She was going to question the Mother while Ryan grilled the father. Castle was uncharacteristically placed in the room outside both, watching the two discussions through the glass.

When Beckett cornered Castle alone for a moment, she told him to keep a close eye on Ryan, because even though there was less to confront the Dad about, Ryan was still shaky from everything. He could easily lose track of where he was and terrify Mr. Evans, then they could be penalized for letting an unstable detective on the case.

Castle tried to watch both interrogations, but his mind instinctively focused on the more interesting of the two discussions. Still, he reserved a portion of his attention towards Ryan's room. Captain Montgomery stood next to him, his eyes flicking from one room to the other.

And then part of his focus was on the underlying problem of Ryan. His mind kept running in the same circles; if only he'd been here when this all started he might've been able to pick up on something everyone else had missed. If only he'd seen his trigger point, he might be able to understand, or they might get a lead on the case.

A snap from Beckett's corner shook him back to reality. It was a good thing Montgomery was here, because he had completely zoned out. Beckett's raised voice was like a well-deserved slap on the wrist that brought his focus back to the case entirely. When Esposito got back, he would press him more for details. Until then, his priorities lay with Kayla.

•••

"You've been advised of your rights?" Ryan asked bluntly to the man in front of him. He knew that if he began confusing personal biases with the facts he took from the case, then he could be kicked off, but he couldn't help the detached method. The man had lied, but until he had more than his meek hunches, he had to focus on getting the truth out of him, and whatever else he could put together.

"Yeah, but no one's answered my question; why the hell am I here?" He shot back angrily. Ryan had to remind himself not to meet his anger, but try and diffuse it. "My daughter just died! You should be searching for her killer, not dragging me from my work without telling me why."

"Until we have reason to believe otherwise, we need to follow where the facts take us. You lied to us Mr. Evans, and that's a pretty big red flag in our book, so you might want to do some damage control." He pulled a couple of pictures out of a folder and laid them on the table. They were stills from the lobby video camera. The time stamp at the top of the picture made things all the more useful. "You told us that you and your wife had gotten home from the charity event around 10:20. Only we have you returning home at 9:30 on the dot. And witnesses have you leaving the event early, not late like you told us. That's almost an hour off. Wanna revise for me?"

"Okay, so I fudged the time a bit," he started, trying to save face. Before Ryan could throw a sarcastic quip back at him, he continued. "It's just, this event was on my head, and my bosses would skin me alive if they found out I left early. I didn't know who you'd be talking to, and what you'd say. I don't want my family to lose half their source of income right after this tragedy."

"You should've come clean with us from the beginning. It would save us from asking this again; what were you and your wife doing between 9:12 and 9:35?"

Mr. Evans sighed in frustration, and rubbed the bridge of his nose before answering. "My wife and I walked back to our apartment from the event. We got back home; we talked with Jessie for a bit, and then she left and we went to bed. That was about 9:40-9:45. If Kayla was killed, it was probably sometime after then."

•••

"So Mrs. Dawson, we ran down everyone's alibis for the entire day, and guess which one red-flagged? I've got Pam Linden saying that you've been giving her a lot of your work these past three weeks, and a babysitter saying that you've been asking her to work late for the same amount of time. Want to tell me where you've been?"

"P-please, don't tell Luke!" The woman begged Beckett, but the detective barely batted an eyelash. "He c-c-can't know. Not yet!"

"Know _what_, Mrs. Dawson?"

She looked up at Beckett when she heard the demanding, persuasive words words echo through the air. At that moment, Beckett hoped that either Montgomery or Castle was listening at the moment, because she expected an answer right about now.

"Know that I'm f-f-filing for divorce. I've been with my lawyer these past three w-weeks, b-building a c-case. I want complete custody of the kids…" she paused sadly, "of Aaron."

"Three weeks is a lot of time with your husband out of the loop. He tends to work later hours, and has to take more of his work home. You could easily get custody." Beckett tried not to show a grin of victory at the Mother's news. They _were_ in an unhappy marriage.

"I know. I was trying to b-build a case s-strong enough that my lawyer was sure I'd win. It's just… I l-like certainty. I was going to c-confront Luke about the divorce t-today, but then this happened."

"What were the events leading up to your decision to file for divorce?" Beckett knew which buttons to press to get answers.

"We just… began to f-fight a lot, and things sometimes got heated. When we started fighting in front of Kayla and Aaron, I knew that it had gone too far." She sighed and fiddled nervously with the ring around her finger. Finally, she calmed herself down, and her voice took on a melancholy tone. "Aaron would go into Kayla's room and c-calm her down, saying that it was going to be okay, that it would be over s-soon. He'd distract her with b-books and games."

"He sounds like a good kid."

"The best."

•••

If the bang of the swinging doors hitting the wall didn't alert Lanie that she had a visitor, then the clang of a cart of her tools being knocked over would've. She jumped at the noise of the metal tools tumbling to the tile floor, then quickly rushed out to see who could possibly making all the commotion. She didn't expect what she saw.

"So guess who Ashleigh is! You'll never be expecting this one!" Esposito growled, his hands clenched into white fists around the metal table. She wouldn't have been surprised if he bent it.

"What's gotten into you?"

"I got my answer."

"Okay, calm down first," Lanie instructed with the smallest hint of fear. Esposito was strong, and her morgue wouldn't be able to take an explosion of rage. She picked up a stool and handed it to him. Tentatively, he sat down, but left his fists wrapped around the corners. "Tell me what happened."

"I went to see Tessa, figuring she'd know about this. Well, she did, but she acted the same way Ryan had, all afraid to talk, and nervous about something. I finally got her to talk though."

"And?" Lanie didn't know Ryan as well as she knew his partner, but she still cared about the man, and wanted to know what'd happened.

"She was his baby sister. His goddamn five year old kid sister! He had a third sister that none of them ever talked about, like she never existed."

"They were afraid to talk about her? What happened?"

"They don't know. According to Tessa and Beth, she just disappeared." Lanie knew that voice, and what he was getting at.

"You think that Ryan knows more?"

The possibilities were endless. She wasn't a detective, but her mind was already racing with the different endings to the tale. None of them were good. She had spent too much time with cops, and had heard too many case endings from Beckett and Esposito to think outside the box. Whatever it was that happened, it couldn't be good.

"They sounded upset. He sounds haunted. What am I supposed to think?"

"I dunno."

"And how am I supposed to confront him about this? The guy won't say a word to me about it. He wants it to stay in the past."

"Well, didn't you want Ike's death to stay in the past? No matter how unlikely, Kayla and Ashleigh are connected, at least in Ryan's mind. Maybe if you get him to open up, it could help with Kayla. Or help with Ryan."

Lanie saw Esposito wince when she mentioned his old partner and the Finch case. That was one case she hadn't heard the end of from Esposito. Ryan had actually come down to the morgue and filled her in. Beckett had too much work, and she didn't know how to ask her. Ryan probably knew about Esposito and her tradition, and decided to give her some peace of mind.

"Yeah, but how can you completely bury your sister's existence for twenty years?"

•••

Beckett, Ryan, Castle, and Montgomery had assembled outside the interrogation rooms to discuss what little they had gotten from the interviews. The very few upsides to the discussions was that she had a new alibi to run down, she was going to speak to her lawyer and see if any details popped, and they had a better timeline. They still didn't narrow down the killzone, but at least it was more accurate.

"Detective Beckett?" Doctor Holloway, the psych examiner from the precinct walked up to her with his normal tight-lipped nod in greeting. She had called him yesterday, and had been keeping him filled in since.

"Can you make an analysis yet?"

"Well, from what you and your detectives have told me, I'm inclined to agree with Doctor Parish to an extent; he was traumatized from an early age. I am slower, however, to diagnose it as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It certainly has some of the symptoms, which I'll blame on the trauma, but his daily functioning isn't completely impaired. He can still function, and even thrive in a normal setting."

"So what does that mean?" Beckett asked, keeping the professional air with him. Glancing to the side, she saw Castle's interest peak, and he quickly rushed over to join in the conversation. He probably recognized Holloway from the vampire case, and decided to see what was being said.

"It means that as long as he doesn't interact with triggering stimuli, he should be fine. But clearly, this entire case has been an upsetting reminder, so he will be a bit unpredictable. In all honesty, I was surprised how well he was functioning, all things considered."

"What do you mean by that?" Even though Beckett knew he was coming to listen in, she had to keep herself from jumping slightly when she heard Castle's voice right over her shoulder.

"Well, from your description, and my analysis of his behavior the past few days, he's been exposed to something really horrific, enough to completely obliterate all concepts of safety. Many people go insane, fall apart, or develop mental disorders such as Multiple Personality Disorder, or PTSD. Usually it takes them lifetimes to recover, and the experience almost always leaves scars."

"So how do you think he did it?"

"Detective, have you ever been so focused in work that you just forget about all personal problems for hours at a time?" He asked rhetorically, but behind Beckett, she heard an amused snicker.

"I think you have just described Kate Beckett to a tee." She spun around to glare at him for the comment, but then quickly turned back focus to the psychologist who had taken time out of his job to do this favor for her.

"Well, it's like that, but all the time. Detective Ryan seemed to have learned how to compartmentalize at a moment's notice, which is why he would have a fit, and then wake up seemingly fine. When he was a kid, he found something important enough to dedicate his entire being to, and it was more helpful than he realized."

"So why the sudden loss of control?" Beckett asked curiously. Why hadn't this revealed itself years ago? She'd been working with Ryan and Esposito for five years straight now. That's a pretty good run time for a team. How had this not cropped up at any point in the last five years?

"Because they're the same," Castle suddenly chimed in, his thoughtful epiphany voice coming out. Both Doctor Holloway, and Beckett turned to the writer, waiting for an explanation.

"When he was little, he found a constant distraction, probably in his family, or his friends, or his homework. Recently he used work to keep it buried. But now, he made this connection in his mind between Kayla's murder and whatever he experienced. So now, he's facing it every minute of every day. His coping technique is working against him, but he doesn't know what else to do, so he keeps doing it."

Beckett just stared at him for a moment before beginning to shake her head. "That…"

"makes a lot of sense, actually." Holloway cut her off, nodding in approval towards Castle, who beamed with pride. Beckett just rolled her eyes, not allowing the author's ego to swell up any more than it already was.

"Are there any other unknown symptoms that we might need to know about?" Beckett directed her attention back to Holloway.

"Yes, next to his coping method, it isn't unusual for a child to dissociate from traumatic situations, especially if they were repeating. I wouldn't be surprised if Ryan's memory is slightly impaired. Nothing too much, just the mysteries of the brain, where it can learn to forget experiences too terrible to cope with. That's called an amnestic barrier, but it begins to break down in the late twenties to early thirties."

"So you're suggesting that on top of the triggering case, Ryan's amnestic barrier is also deteriorating, and he's starting to remember everything he made himself forget?" Castle chimed in again sounding more worried than before. Beckett equally felt a stab of concern for her teammate.

"That would be about right. Once again, I'd have to talk to him to be sure about any of this. This is entirely my instincts and observations." Beckett immediately saw where this was going, and she didn't want Holloway to make big news out of Ryan's possible condition. He would get defensive, and probably feel betrayed. If that happened, then she could easily lose one of her best detectives, as well as a close friend.

"Thank you for everything Doctor Holloway, but we can handle this from here."

•••

Castle was surprised when his ringtone went off in his jacket pocket. Ryan was at his desk, talking to Mrs. Dawson's lawyer, or the lawyer's secretary. One or the other. At the moment, he seemed to be confirming Mrs. Dawson's whereabouts for the past three weeks. Beckett was at the murder board with him. Lanie had shown them plenty in their other visits that he had missed. Plus, if it was Lanie, she would've called Beckett, not him. Alexis had class right now, and wouldn't call him for another few hours.

He finally decided to stop guessing, and unlocked his iPhone. Apparently, he had a text from Esposito. Curiously, he went to go read it, and was surprised by what he saw.

_Heading to the 12__th__ now. What'd I miss?_

Castle only took a moment's pause to think before he hit the "reply" button, and began typing. _Mystery sitter is Jessie's boyfriend. Mom filing for divorce in secret. And Doc Holloway wants to talk to you about Ryan. So, what'd we miss?_

Though Esposito had only been gone a few hours, Castle knew that he wouldn't be talking to him right now if he didn't already have what he needed.

_I know who Ashley (Ashlee? Ashlie? Ashleigh?) is._

_Who is she?_

Castle waited, but he didn't get an answer to that text.

•••

Ryan rubbed his temples roughly, pressing the balls of his thumbs forcefully into the pressure points. He hoped that it would alleviate the dull throbbing, but only made it more persistent. Bits and flecks of memory started to seep into his brain, as much as he tried to push them out. He much preferred not remembering the majority of the details he was compiling.

Once again, he tried to focus himself on his work. He needed to run down the lawyer, and look through the case files. Mrs. Dawson wanted a flawless case; it was rare that someone wanted perfection unless they were asking something drastic. He had read the same sentence five times already, and he was positive that once he gathered up the concentration to begin skimming again, that he'd review that same damned sentence.

Esposito had seemed really upset with him, his traitorous mind wandered back into unsafe ground. But then again, even the safest grounds were becoming risky now. He had scared Jenny, and upset his best friend, all in the course of one day. And over something twenty years in the past. He should just be able to man up and talk about it.

And yet…

It just felt so much in the present. He hated that he kept comparing the case to his own pathetic past, but he did. There were too many parallels for him not to. Still, without evidence he wasn't going to put his own wild theories out into the open. Without evidence, he sounded ridiculous, and pathetic; Castle could pull it off, but he couldn't. He had to be a cop, and cops couldn't follow cases on personal hunches.

He would never admit it, but another reason he withheld his gut instincts, was because voicing them would make him feel vulnerable. They were all detectives, and clever ones at that. They'd put two and two together in a heartbeat. It'd all be out in the open.

Once again, he forced himself out of the tunnel of his mind, and back to the computer screen. As predicted, his eyes immediately moved to find that same sentence that he had read a thousand times in the past thirty minutes. He had just begun to continue past that one obstacle, when a familiar voice met his ears.

"Yeah, I figured I'd come back for the last two hour stretch to see if I could help with anything. What'd I miss?"

It was his partner. Ryan turned his head ever so slightly to check the source of the voice, and through his peripheral vision, he got his confirmation. Esposito was in fact, talking to Beckett, getting the run-down of everything he had missed that day. After this morning, he had no clue how his partner would react to him, and he was understandably nervous.

The conversation with the team leader was short, and Ryan watched him wrap up quickly, only to be pulled over by Castle almost immediately after. They talked only for a couple seconds, before heading into the break room.

Unsure of what else to do, Ryan turned back to the computer screen, and tried to continue reading through the lawyer's notes. Naturally, he began to read the same sentence again.

* * *

**So, this is for the person who always saves me from my demons. This is for my best friend. They know who they are. I love you. **

**Next up:**

**Chapter Fourteen: Before**

********

But hey. I promised that I'd update sometime this weekend, so here you guys go. You've been fantastic for waiting on me.


	14. Before

**Thanks for all the reviews guys. I still love reading them, and I've been under a lot lately.**

**This chapter's got two dedications. One is to my little sister, Isabelle. She's always the first to read my writing, and had been pestering me about the salt water taffy scene you'll see soon for a _long _time. **

**The other is to Caffeine-Faerie. I was going through a rough time and couldn't get a hold of the people I normally confide in, and the message you sent really helped. I told you I'd update soon, so this chapter is half for you.**

**Now, without further ado...**

**Chapter Fourteen: Before**

Esposito scoffed at Castle's pathetic attempt to signal for Beckett to join them in the break room covertly. He might as well have yelled across the room for her to join them because they were talking about what he had found out. She rolled her eyes in typical Beckett fashion before quietly meandering over with an empty mug in hand.

"You wanna make that any more obvious Castle? You have yet to set up a billboard across the walls?" she asked quietly as she passed by both of them and went to refill her "Instant Detective. Just add coffee" mug. Esposito casually moved closer to the espresso machine, and Castle followed his lead.

"So, did you find anything out?" Castle asked impatiently, nerves apparent in every syllable.

"Oh you'd better believe it. You're never gonna guess this one?" He said, the smug tone missing from his speech. This was his partner, and he hated thinking about what he had heard.

"Give me a day and I bet I could…"

"Nah bro," Esposito cut the writer off with a sudden solemn tone, even more serious than the previous. The expression immediately shut the writer up. "Not this one."

"So, what'd you find out?" Beckett prompted, finally speaking up.

"I talked to Tessa, the oldest of his two younger sisters. Talked to Beth too, but only over the phone. You know how Ryan mentioned some girl named Ashleigh a couple of times when he was out of it?"

"You got an identity," Beckett didn't phrase it as a question. It was a statement, and for that Esposito was grateful.

"She was his sister."

There was a pause while Beckett and Castle absorbed that new piece of information. Both of them opened their mouths to speak, but fell short of words, getting caught in perplexity. They both found their voice at around the same time, but couldn't finish their sentences.

"You mean his sister as in…?"

"But, how is that…?"

"How is that possible?" Esposito acknowledged Beckett's question, "I'm wondering the same thing. Apparently their father didn't let them mention her after she disappeared, so she practically vanished from existence."

"Wait, start from the beginning, okay?"

Esposito sighed, remembering that they didn't know the whole story. "She was five when she suddenly disappeared, and then her family started acting like she'd never existed. The father didn't want anyone to mention her."

"Well, how old was Ryan when all of this happened?"

Esposito paused to do the math in his head. He hadn't asked himself that question before. He had automatically known that his partner had been young, but he hadn't thought out the specific age. Tessa had been nine, and she's three years younger than him so, "He was twelve."

"Okay, something doesn't add up," Castle added thoughtfully. With just a look, Esposito knew that Beckett had already thought through what Castle was just about to say. Whatever it was, he was sure that he had already beaten the writer to it too. "I can understand that being tragic, upsetting, maybe scarring, but more in a Beckett way. Not in a PTSD way. There has to be more she didn't tell you."

"Or didn't know," Beckett chimed in, sending a little glare Castle's way about the quip about her.

"Well, whatever," Castle tried to reclaim the spotlight. "We just talked with Holloway, who Beckett had asked for consulting help. What he'd described sounded more like a fearing-for-your-life/sanity kind of thing, as opposed to the loss of a loved one."

"I know. I'll go talk to Holloway later, but first I wanted to look up the case file of Ashleigh's disappearance. There had to be something in the system that can explain things a little better," Esposito explained with a determination.

"Sure thing, but there's a little thing we tend to do here called work. Go talk to Holloway and get his analysis, but before you start searching for Ashleigh, we do still need you on the Evans case. We've got Ryan on the lawyer's case notes, and Castle's trying to get more specific on the times of arrival and departure for everyone involved by going over the video again to see if there's anything we missed. I really need a guy monitoring the boyfriend's ETA back in the city."

Of course Beckett was focusing on Kayla. After all, no one else really seemed to be in the team, and Kayla's murder was supposed to take priority. Esposito sighed and nodded. He could easily run two searches at the same time; he was good at multitasking.

"What the…!" Ryan's voice met their ears from outside the break room, and all three turned to look at each other before heading to the doorway of the break room to see what the exclamation was for.

•••

Beckett had feared that Holloway had begun talking to Ryan directly, or assumed he'd be hovering over his computer with his desk phone pressed to his ear by his shoulder. What she didn't expect was what she got.

Ryan was talking with a delivery man with confusion written across his face. Beckett's expression probably mimicked his when she saw what the delivery was. It was a giant barrel, like the kind you would expect to find in medieval pubs, and pirate ships only, fully living up to all the stereotypical pictures of a barrel. She went to meet the delivery man to see what this was about, and somewhere, she knew Esposito and probably Castle was following her.

"Um, yo ho?" She asked in confusion.

"Apparently, it's for you." Ryan replied with an equally perplexed tone.

"Ooh!" The excited outburst of understanding that came from Castle's direction did little to put her mind at ease. If anything, she was even more afraid of what to expect now. If the barrel was Castle's doing, then it was bound to be excessive, unconventional, and unnecessary.

"What'd you send us Castle?" Her voice fell flat and stern, immediately judgmental of the situation. One eyebrow was raised and her jaw was set so her mouth was held in a tight line. She felt the guys staring at her, but she ignored them pointedly, waiting for Castle's explanation.

"Let's move this into the break room, shall we?" He said in his usual proud joviality before turning to the delivery guy and telling him where to leave it. The writer ushered everyone back into the break room, Ryan and Esposito following behind with amusement.

"Fifteen bucks says she yells," she heard Ryan say to Esposito in light-hearted amusement, and it surprised her how quickly he could revert back to his normal mindset. Without turning around she could tell that Esposito was just as thrown by the sentence as she was. After a moment though, he gathered up his senses and responded.

"You're on."

Esposito had every right to be cautious about it. Beckett was too. It's hard to see someone you think you know so well, and care about a lot become a wounded, haunted person with a history you'd never heard about. But what was almost as hard and just as confusing was watching them turn around and suddenly go back to the same person you thought you knew.

Regardless, she forced herself to lose her inner skeptic, and allow herself to enjoy the normalcy of the situation. Castle had gotten too extravagant again, Ryan and Esposito were joking around, she was waiting to be the voice of reason in the group, and Montgomery would probably be watching on with that glint of amusement and fatherly affection. Maybe Karpowski would get up to see what was going on. All very normal.

"So, I was telling the guys about this the other day, but back in the Hamptons, there was this tiny shop that sells the most fantastic homemade salt water taffy on the face of the earth. Now, I had already bought out more than five times my weight in the stuff, but my friends down at the Twelfth went deprived, so there was nothing I could do but send some over to you."

Castle's smile was huge and prideful, like a puppy who thought he did something good and was waiting to get its belly rubbed. Just behind him, the large barrel was being opened with a crow bar, and the colorful pieces of taffy wrapped in wax paper stood out near the top rim of it.

"Yeah, I can understand sending over a box, maybe. But a barrel? How the hell are we possibly going to finish this?"

"Oh!" She heard Ryan quietly add in behind her, and she could just see Esposito groaning as he handed over the money. She knew it was all an act though. Esposito knew that he'd lose that bet, he just wanted to make it because it was easier to see his partner the way he's always seen him.

"Oh come on, it's delicious! I bet it'll be gone in no time. You'll try a piece, and completely change your mind about it." That dumb puppy dog grin was still present on his face, and she wanted to smack it off for being so ridiculously annoying. Because that's what it was; annoying. Normal, infuriatingly annoying Castle being the immature eight year old boy he always has been. Not adorable at all.

Nope, not the least bit adorable.

"Well our dentists will be sure to thank you for your contributions to their paychecks." She snapped back sarcastically.

"Try one of these and I promise you will not care about the cavities."

"Maybe later. Right now, I have work to do." It was a good thing she turned around when she did, because otherwise Castle would've seen the inexorable grin that took over her face in the next instant. But it was only because she had loved salt water taffy so much when she was a girl, and hadn't eaten it since childhood. It had _nothing_ to do with the man who had bought it for her.

Maybe if she thought it enough, she'd actually believe herself.

•••

Both Ryan and Esposito stared at the barrel of taffy, intrigued with the colorful candies inside.

"Hey man, that wouldn't happen to be for…"

"everyone at the precinct? Absolutely, help yourselves," the writer gestured grandly, then ran off to follow Beckett to the murder board.

"Now that he's here, think we'll be able to get him to leave?" Ryan asked with a smirk while they both stared off at Castle's retreating figure.

"Nah way bro. That boy's here to stay, at least, where the case is concerned." Esposito replied without having to think about it twice.

"Thirty bucks says something happens before September," Ryan didn't know why, but he was in the betting mood.

"You might as well just give me the money now bro," Esposito scoffed at him, and slowly inched closer to the barrel of salt water taffies. Ryan inched with him.

"You don't think they'll come to their senses?"

"Beckett doesn't want to stick her neck out again. She's afraid that she'll get hurt."

"Yeah, but she knows that he's not interested in his ex-wife now. There's nothing stopping her," Ryan reasoned as he reached for a blue taffy wrapped up in the wax paper. Even as he argued about it, he felt his confidence in this bet start to decline.

"Really bro?"

"Well," he scrambled to amend his last statement. "Obviously there's the past but Castle's just as persistent as ever and she's not in denial anymore. It'll all boil down to whether or not he's more pushy than her doubts."

"And you think he will be?" Why did that feel like a loaded question to Ryan? There was too much weight on the question to just be about Beckett.

"Yeah, I know Castle. The guy won't give up," He wish he knew what the added weight to that question was about before he answered it, but it was too late for that. Plus, he trusted what he said. Beckett may have her doubts, but it won't take long for Castle to figure out that Demming was out of the picture, and he cared too much about Beckett to just let her go. "So, you ready to put your money where your mouth is?"

"You know it bro," Esposito said, then popped a green taffy into his mouth. "Woah, it really _is _good."

Ryan picked up the blue and took a small bite of it, before moaning slightly, and nodding. "Definitely worth the cavities."

Both took a couple more before heading back to their desks. The lawyer's case notes were still daunting him from the computer screen, and he just knew that he was doomed to re-read that same sentence. Things like that had happened before, so he knew he wouldn't get much farther than that paragraph until tomorrow, and even if he did he wouldn't understand a word of it. He would've switched with Esposito, but he wasn't particularly in the mood to track the flight of the boyfriend. Airport tracking was never his favorite.

"So, we still on for Madden tonight?"

The question caught him off guard, and suddenly on the defense. He hadn't forgotten what had happened that morning. There was an unspoken rule of not talking about stuff like that at the precinct if they could help it, but either of their apartments was open game. There was a possibility that he would try to confront him about it again, and he didn't want that. But on the other hand, if he backed out, Esposito would know something was wrong, and then there'd be no escaping him.

**"Sure. Your place or mine?" His mouth made the decision for him, and he immediately regretted it.**

"Mine,"

"You're still freaked about the couch aren't you?" He accused to take the tension out of his mind.

"You found it on the street bro. That's just nasty,"

They were still bantering with each other easily, so he allowed himself to believe things had reverted back to normal. Maybe nothing out of the ordinary would happen that night. Hopefully, they'd just eat pizza, drink beer, and play Madden. Maybe this entire thing would just quickly be forgotten.

Maybe if he believed it, it would become the truth.

Yeah, and maybe the tooth fairy really does exist.

* * *

**Well, there's the second part of the revelation arc. In the next two chapters, you're finally going to learn Ryan's full story, and understand why he reacted the way he did.**

** Let me know how my build-up is going, and if I'm revealling stuff too soon or too late. Or just let me know in general.**

** Your next chapter is:**

** Chapter Fifteen: The Storm**


	15. The Storm

**Hey everyone! Thanks for waiting on me to get this out. Regardless, it's here now, and even though it's a bit short, the next chapter (which will be the final chapter in the little revealing arc) will be much longer. **

**This one's for my brother; Billy. For always being there to listen, comfort me, protect me, and call me on my bull.**

**Having said that, I feel like this quote, that's one of my favorites is appropriate to put here:**

**"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof." -Richard Bach**

**Chapter Fifteen: The Storm**

Esposito knew that Ryan would be here any minute, so he paused to take in the surroundings of his living room. It was neat enough, and the game controllers were already out on the coffee table. There was a pizza box on the kitchen counter that he knew probably wouldn't be eaten. It would just be plastic bagged and stuck in the fridge along with his tower of other leftovers.

He had no clue how to approach this. After all, he had tried to get Ryan to open up before and not a damn thing had happened in that department. His partner had been tight-lipped on the subject and adamant to stay that way.

But now he had new information, new theories from Holloway, and a better idea of what to prompt him with.

Would any of it help? They weren't like normal work friends. Being partners on the force is much different from other lines of work. In fact, the connection between partners and teams was closer in comparison to the bond that soldiers form in combat than to work friends. After all, you trust them with your life.

But Ryan and he went beyond that. They were best friends and knew each other better than almost anyone. Esposito had thought that they knew everything about each other.

Well, almost everything anyway.

At that thought, he heard the lock rattle and slide a bit before his partner stepped through the door with a six-pack of beer. Even before anything had happened, there was tension in the normally familiar actions. Maybe Ryan was expecting another round of questions.

"Hey, why the late start tonight?" Ryan asked him normally enough, but Esposito knew that the moment he answered with his half truth, his partner would know something was up.

"I stayed late at the precinct running down some stuff. Felt bad for skipping out on you guys today."

"Nah, if you need a day off, then you need a day off. The world doesn't stop turning," there was the expected half-tense voice. He knew how easily the conversation could be switched to worse topics. "Find anything?"

That question gave Esposito the opening he needed. "Yeah, I did," he knew Ryan heard how loaded the words were. "But not about the Evans case."

"What do you mean?" He was just stalling, like when they chased down suspects for an arrest, and the dirtbags threw boxes and other things in their way to avoid capture. But they always knew that they'd eventually get caught. It was the typical fight or flight response, but he had never thought that he'd be seeing it from his partner.

"You're not fooling anyone. There's something up, so stop pretending there isn't." Esposito was just so tired of all the denials. This time, he wasn't letting his partner off as easily as he did the other times. He knew a lot more now, but there was still this big gap, and it was screwing with the team, and the case, and it was screwing with him. He had been patient, but patience wasn't getting him anywhere.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh come on bro! You're better than that. Besides, you're a detective. You know how much that's going to convince me."

"I don't have to say anything." That low blow hurt Esposito more than he hoped he let on. He was used to hearing that line from the more educated suspects in the box. It was a sign of distrust. When criminals waved the fifth amendment in their faces, everyone always groans at the obvious mask it is. Never had he thought that he'd be hearing it from Ryan.

"Well I'm glad you know your rights. But I'm not asking you as a cop, I'm asking as a friend, and a seriously worried one at that."

"It's _nothing_! Stop worrying about me already and focus on who actually needs it: Kayla." Ryan surprised himself by bringing Kayla into the argument, but Esposito ignored the comment about the Evans girl, and kept to the conversation.

"It's not nothing Kev. And, I know about Ashleigh, so you can drop that bull."

The conversation quickly felt silent, and it took forever for Ryan to formulate a response. When he did manage the single word, it sounded wounded, and compliant. "What?"

"I did my research," at least Ryan wasn't denying it anymore. Esposito finally felt like he was getting to the heart of the matter. "You never told me you had a third sister."

"How?"

"Talked to Tessa, and did a search." He waited for an angry response, yelling, or something else from his partner. He didn't expect him to rub at his temple, then slowly sit down on his couch. Esposito took that as an opening to keep talking. "Took me a while because of the name. Unusual spelling of Ashleigh, and she had a different last name. Turns out Ryan is your Mother's maiden name, and you were originally Kevin Decker."

"So?" Ryan had stopped fighting completely and just seemed to be letting Esposito talk at him now. He really had no clue if this was a step up, or a step down from what he wanted.

"So what's your sister not telling me? What doesn't she know? She didn't react to it the same way you did. There's something else going on than just her kidnapping, isn't there?"

Ryan seemed to find a sudden burst of energy, and stood up to face Esposito. He was angry again, and this time it was real anger, not stubbornness or determination but real anger. Ryan rarely ever got truly angry, but when he did, it was terrifying. "You don't know anything!" Ryan shouted, causing him to jump. "Whatever you think you know, I'm telling you now; you don't! So quit prying and stay the hell out of it!"

Ryan turned around, and made to leave, fumbling slightly at the door, but making quick process into the hall. Esposito just stood there for a minute in shock and hurt before his mind jumpstarted back into action. He had said that he wasn't going to let his partner off the hook this time, and he meant that. He only paused to grab his key and lock the door behind him before he took off after his partner.

•••

Ryan needed to breathe. He really needed to breathe. He had given up on speed walking the minute he stepped out of the building, and burst out in a full-fledged sprint. Even with all of his experience being a cop, despite everything that told him how dumb of an idea it was past 11 pm, he still ran into Central park, looking for a place where he could be alone with his thoughts.

He found his refuge in a tall rock formation shrouded by trees. It had no graffiti, and seemed almost perfectly secluded. Finding a place to sit, and rest his back against a tree trunk, he let himself sink into his thoughts.

Esposito didn't know anything. How could he tell him anyway? His partner wouldn't get it, wouldn't know what to do with it. There wasn't anything _to_ do anyway. There's nothing that could be done, so why worry everybody?

Well, no one, especially not his partner saw it that way.

He wasn't sure how he'd be able to face Esposito tomorrow. This morning's conversation was bad enough; at least they could've put that one in the past and to rest. This one pretty much felt like the point of no return. He had admitted that something was bothering him, he had admitted to Ashleigh's existence, and Esposito knew that there was something else Tessa and Beth didn't know. There was no way to make him forget about it. One thing his partner was, if anything, was stubborn.

"Hey bro,"

The two words behind him made him jump in fright. He didn't recognize the voice as his partner's until he turned around. He was still nervous around him. He didn't let his body relax, because he was sure that at any moment the man would be back down his throat, demanding that he talk about something he wished could just stay buried. If only he could convey how much he couldn't talk about it, about how much it was hurting him, about how much it should stay in the past. He couldn't think of what to say except one pathetic little question.

"Why are you doing this?" It sounded weak and vulnerable, and scared, even to himself. He sounded like a kicked puppy whining after a blow, not because it was surprised or because it was trying to stop the blows, just because it was one more infliction of pain and the only thing it had the strength to do now was lie down and cry. Maybe that's what he was after all.

Esposito seemed to hear the wounded voice too, and took a step back and held out his hands to him, like they do to show suspects that they were unarmed. Tentatively, his partner tried to take a step forward again, and opened his mouth as if to answer the question. Ryan had no clue what response to expect, but what he actually heard was the last guess on his mind.

"Eleventh grade."

He had heard the tone before, but only when Esposito was talking about Ike Thornton's supposed murder. Except for that one time, he had never heard his partner's voice filled with so much nostalgia, and hurt, and regret.

"Huh?" That's all he could muster up to say. He was proud that he could even get that articulate. Before he had recognized a professional style of interrogation, but this, he didn't know what to make of so far. It could be considered as pulling the "I'm your friend" routine, but Ryan was pretty sure this didn't exactly count as that, seeing as they were friends.

"Eleventh grade," Esposito repeated. "That's when I first considered becoming a cop. Beckett had her mother's murder. Yours is clearly whatever happened with Ashleigh. Mine was in eleventh grade."

Ryan still didn't know what to say, and barely noticed that his mouth was still hanging open in confusion. He really didn't react much at all, holding his partner's gaze. Esposito took the first step and moved to sit next to him. Ryan didn't know what he was supposed to say, so he just watched, and waited for him to continue.

Esposito broke eye contact with him when he started the story, and stared at the lake in front of them. Ryan wanted to stare at the lake too, but he couldn't take his eyes off his partners face. It was contorted in hurt and, was it guilt?

"My best friend at the time, Mark Hill had got messed up after his parent's divorce. I knew about the drugs, but I didn't know about the depression. He was a good actor." His partner paused for a bitter sound that sounded like a mutated laugh. Just a single short burst completely devoid of humor, but a laugh nonetheless.

"I didn't find out about the gun. It wasn't like I talked him down from a ledge and was inspired to save lives afterwards. I wasn't any kind of hero for the story. I didn't save him by accident either; I didn't say the right thing at the right time, or interrupt him just before." Esposito didn't even seem to know he was there anymore, but Ryan was astutely aware of every word. He still had no clue why his partner was telling him this, but he'd never heard this story, and stories like this weren't things most cops would talk about.

"In the end, pure coincidence saved him. His backpack was half open that day, and the hallways were crowded. Someone bumped into him, he got knocked into a wall, and the contents of the backpack got spilled out in the hall. A teacher saw the gun, and he left school for three months to get help. It was entirely by chance that he didn't get the opportunity to put a bullet through his skull."

Esposito sighed and finally turned his attention back to Ryan, who still sat there in silence. "If I had been walking on the right instead of the left, he'd be dead now. More than anything else I hated that I didn't know. If I had known, then his life wouldn't have been determined by accident. But I didn't know, and someone almost died."

Ryan knew what he was getting at now. They told each other everything, and Esposito did hate being kept in the dark about things. Whether it was the small things like the origins of Ryan's red couch, the benzofyosopheme in the shaving cream, or larger things like being the last to hear about Kate's apartment being blown up, his partner always despised being out of the loop. It probably didn't help that his eleventh grade was repeated again with his old partner Ike just months ago. Suddenly, that small compulsion made a lot more sense.

"But you know what? That's the past. It had a happy ending anyway; I'm cool with that. What I'm not down with is whatever's bugging you now. You're my best friend and I don't know what's going on. I'm asking you, as your partner, and your friend to talk to me about this."

Ryan's throat constricted tightly. How could he tell him about Ashleigh? How could he not? After that, he owed it to the guy. Esposito was probably freaked that history was going to repeat itself again, and that he would make all the same mistakes that he'd made in the past.

But he wasn't sure if he could bear to talk about something he hadn't been allowed to talk about for twenty years. He hadn't allowed himself to think about it much at all. He was too busy taking raising and care of his sisters. After everything, neither of his parents was in the best place to watch three kids, and being the oldest, the responsibility fell to him. Thinking about it just hurt, so he went out of his way to raise Tessa and Beth right, and never let them find out the truth of that night.

"She was my baby sister; just barely five," he said quietly, with a hint of mourning in his voice before he focused himself again, and slowly and painfully nodded to Esposito.

He had to get it out, if only for Kayla and Esposito's sake. But he knew it was also for himself. Now that he had begun, he knew that there was no way he could back out; he had just crossed the point of no return, and he wasn't sure if he regretted it already or not. Some sort of terror pierced him about finally having to face all of his demons, but he took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes closed to give himself the strength to continue. Once he felt as ready as he could possibly be, he braced himself for the pain the memory was sure to bring, and opened his mouth again to speak.

"Listen Jav, whatever you think you know about what happened, I can swear you don't. It's all wrong," he paused for a moment, and gulped at his own realization. "I'm the only one who knows the truth."

* * *

**You have all been good with the reviews lately, so I'll give you the chapter name for the next one, which is the last chapter in the arc and the huge reveal for Ryan's story. **

** So, the next chapter will be:**

** Chapter Sixteen: The Story Without a Happy Ending.**

** Please let me know what you think of this chapter. I want to hear from all of you!**


	16. The Story Without a Happy Ending

**I must warn you that this chapter is going to be kind of horrible. You're finally getting Ryan's entire backstory, and it'll explain why he was traumatized, and what had happened between him and Ashleigh.**

**I'm going to ask that now more than ever I'd really love reviews, if only because I want to know how much you could've seen this coming, how well you think I did it, any suggestions for improvement, what aspects of the story seemed unrealistic, how the voice sounded, why you think I gave you that quote last chapter, etc. Anything you can think of. Please, this chapter is very important to me. I know that I have approx 150 devout readers out there, and anywhere between 7-9 devout reviewers out there. If only for this one chapter, please give me your feedback.**

**Chapter Sixteen: The Story Without a Happy Ending**

"You know how twelve year old boys are; they don't like to be seen playing with girls. Well, I was never like that. Mom and Dad… that was a weird situation. Dad worked, and when he wasn't working he went out to drink with the guys and when he got home, he crashed in front of the TV or in his room. And Mom didn't know how to handle children. I was pretty much the one left to take care of my sisters." He didn't know why he started there, but it felt necessary.

"I helped them with their homework, I took them to the park when they wanted to go, I read them bedtime stories, I made way more than half of the meals they ever ate, I played tooth fairy and took dollars from my own money for them. I put band-aids on their cuts, and even did the whole kiss-it-better thing because they liked it,"

He almost smiled wistfully at the memory. He had loved raising his sisters, even if the environment he did it in was far from idyllic. He had been so proud watching all of them growing up and finding themselves, and really transforming from children to adults. Even if it made him sound like a girl, he really treasured those memories.

"Where we lived… it was the definition of rural. We practically lived in the woods, and it was a half a mile to town. We did a lot of walking. Tessa could keep up, and Beth was always determined to live up to her big sister, so she learned to keep pace too. It was Ashleigh who was slow at walking. A lot of the time, I carried her. Of course, she would walk a lot too, but when we were in a rush, I'd just carry her."

"Dad was the model citizen in town. He owned the super market in town, so everyone went to him for food. We weren't that bad off. He had a lot of friends. It was a pretty small, conservative town. The kind where you know everyone and everyone knows you. So everyone knew us. It was one of those family values places. People defended each other on principle. If something was going on in the family that you didn't want anyone to know about, there was this big don't-ask-don't-tell policy. It ran pretty much everything. We looked like a happy, quaint town. But there was a lot left unsaid."

"I might've been eight or nine years old when it all started." Esposito sat up at the words. Tessa had been nine when the incident happened. So why was Ryan talking about something three years earlier? He knew he hadn't done the math wrong. Wherever this story was going, he didn't like it.

"Mom just wasn't happy, and it was obvious. But Dad liked normalcy. He had been raised near here, and lived here his entire life. He had no desire for anything to change; he hated things changing. She was raised on the east coast, and liked it there. She always said that she loved the North East and missed it." He grinned slightly at the stories he remembered hearing about the East Coast.

"On those few times when she did tell us bedtime stories, mostly when I was younger, she would tell us about the East. Mostly about New York City, and how every time you turned your head, you were looking at an entirely new place. Nothing stayed the same for more than an instant."

"She was right." He couldn't help the smile that overtook his face at those words. He still remembers getting out of college, and coming directly to New York City. It had been everything he was expecting. The entire world was crammed into New York City, millions of people lived their lives oblivious to everyone else around them, and there were no limits.

"But Dad didn't like Mom's obvious misery. They started getting into fights a lot. He thought she'd leave him; he thought she wasn't active enough in the community, and thought she hated everybody, and wanted everyone to hate her. She denied it mostly. She apologized for giving the wrong impression. But things didn't change much; she still hid away in the house a lot, and went for walks in the woods. She tried to make connections to us, but didn't really know how to relate. It was like she wasn't trying to be our mother so much as she was trying to get to know who we were."

"The girls didn't really seem to notice, or care much. Tessa was very outspoken, and could begin every conversation, and Mom would catch on to what to say. It's probably why she clung to Tessa and Ashleigh so much. Ashleigh was just as outgoing and friendly if not more so. She'd wave to strangers on the streets, and made friends wherever she went. Ashleigh could talk for hours on end, and was the chattiest happiest three year old ever. Mom learned how to bond with them because they made it so easy for her. Beth was quieter and shyer, but still looked up to Mom a lot."

"What about you?" Esposito asked carefully.

"I was more of the caretaker. I helped her connect with them, and gave her tips about them. Sometimes I took care of her too. She always said that she didn't know what she'd do without me, and how I always knew what to do. I looked her eye to eye more than I looked up to her as my mother. More often than not, I saw her as one of the girls I was raising."

"Whenever they fought, I'd watch the girls, and make sure they didn't hear too much. They weren't dumb; they knew what was going on. There was all this tension in the house whenever they fought. We knew to stay confined to a single room while they took the arguments all over the house."

"Like I said, I was eight or nine when things really started going wrong. Or maybe that's when I started _noticing_ things were wrong. Either way is entirely possible, but regardless, things got worse," Ryan swallowed with a great effort. He knew what was coming up next, and wasn't sure how he was going to be able to say what he needed to get across.

"That's when we started finding bruises. That's when everyone started hearing the silence during family meals. I tried to keep all of the girls away from it all, but it was nearly impossible after that point. Sometimes they'd come into the room where the girls were, and start arguing. Mostly, he'd just throw them out of the room and I'd take care of their bruises, calm them down, and say it was an accident. There were a few times when he'd leave them there, and they'd watch the yelling."

"I saw a lot of it too. Most of the time, I was the one getting the girls out of the room. I was always the one taking care of Mom's bruises and scratches, and black eyes. A couple of times I think he yelled at me, and threw me around too, but I was more worried about Mom and my sisters. Mom especially. She had it the worst." Ryan knew where this was heading, and before he did, he felt the distinct need to clarify himself. "I know that there was more that I'm missing from that time. I've lost a lot of time in the past, just not knowing what happened to an hour or two that I'd just blanked out on. Almost all the time I'd walk away from those blackouts with bruises, or a limp, or maybe even some blood stains. Nothing too horrible. I'm almost glad I couldn't remember. I was just more focused on Mom and my sisters."

He paused and sighed, knowing that he couldn't avoid the progression of the story any longer. This was when things were going to get much harder to tell, and much more upsetting to remember. Even though all of it was upsetting to some degree, those next couple of months were always the ones he tried to avoid, because they had scared him so badly.

"Then came the breaking point, when I decided that we couldn't keep doing this. Not after I got the call telling me Mom was in the hospital with a broken leg. I started trying to get her to run away with us, kept saying that we could go east and see the cities, the beaches, and the different seasons. But she just wouldn't listen to me. She said that she couldn't, that he was too strong, and that he would find out, and hurt them."

Ryan felt the tears pricking at his eyes and tried to stop them, but was far from surprised when he couldn't. He just clenched his hands tightly around his knees, and his jaw set in anger and grief from the memory.

"There were two more years of this trying to convince her and her not listening before anything changed much. By then, Tessa was starting to understand what was going on, and helped me to round up Beth and Ashleigh, and protect them from our reality. When any of them got stuck in the room, I'd normally go in and get them out, even if I got dragged into the fights. I don't remember much of those times either. I think I went to the hospital a couple of times. Mom went at least three times as many as I did. Each time we said I got hurt playing sports, and Mom was clumsy. Everyone in town trusted Dad, and no one suspected anything. The only good part about this was that Beth and Ashleigh had no clue that they lived in an abusive household – only a very loud one that fights a lot. Even Tessa really didn't know how much violence went on under that roof. I was glad for every shred of innocence they had."

He sighed deeply, a shuddering breath. It was true; his sisters had remained, for the most part, oblivious. He wasn't sure if he was proud or ashamed of that fact, but he leaned towards proud.

"It was Beth that finally got Mom to start considering escape. Both Mom and I were called to the Principal's about her. She was seven-ish at the time. I think I only went in because Mom wanted me there. After all, I was the parent; she was just the adult. The principal wasn't really comfortable in the beginning with me there, but said afterwards that I was mature beyond my years. Apparently they were playing dodgeball in gym, and she screamed and started crying. They wanted to know what that was about. By now, we were too afraid to try to tell anyone about Dad. We were taught to lie. I made up that she was hit by a basketball when she was younger, and that she was afraid of things flying by her face. He believed it. Of course, people always believed it. It's not just New York where people have a see-no-evil policy. It's everywhere."

"After that, Mom found this small burst of strength. Call it over-protective mothering instincts or whatever you like, but she tried to argue back when Dad started yelling that night. It was late, well past midnight, but I woke up the moment the yelling started. Tessa and Beth learned to be heavy sleepers because of fights, I learned how to be a light sleeper because of them, and Ashleigh had been mostly protected from all of this. She had no clue what was happening. I watched from the crack open in the door. It was worse than it had ever been before."

Ryan paused, enough to put his head in his hands, and rub at his face in some failed attempt to cover up the tears, or to get the memory out of his head, or maybe just to do something to get his hands to stop shaking. His voice had cracked long ago, and was hoarse and gravelly from talking so long. Esposito simply watched wordlessly, trying to take it all in. Ryan's entire body shook from a momentary breakdown into sobs.

"I don't remember much about those nights where I intervened into those fights. I just remember getting Beth, or Tessa, or Ashleigh out, and consoling them, and telling them it would all be okay. Sometimes, I wouldn't even remember being in the hospital. But I remember this night like it happened moments ago." He massaged the bridge of his nose in an agitated manner and rubbed his thumb roughly over his closed eyelids a couple of times, as if trying to wipe the images away from his mind, even though he knew it was impossible.

"I didn't notice Ashleigh wandering from her, Beth, and Tessa's room to the bathroom until it was too late. He saw her, and grabbed her by her shoulder and neck, and started shaking her at Mom, saying that she was trying to make him look pathetic to everyone in town, and trying to alienate us from him, and that she was trying to control him, and that she needed to listen to him. Then he started accusing her of having an affair on him, because Ashleigh was blond, and they both had dark hair. Started calling her a bastard child, and made him look bad, and all sorts of things. She was crying, and I couldn't move. Couldn't do anything."

"Mom was on the ground. Later we found out that she'd broken a rib, and it had punctured her lung. She effectively couldn't do anything besides beg and cry from the ground. She told the hospital that she fell down a hill in the woods, and into a fallen tree trunk. I didn't do anything while my father beat and kicked and hurt her. My baby sister, and I couldn't move to protect her."

By this point, his voice shook with a thousand emotions, each dark one haunted his face as he trembled in fury, and fear, and grief, and confusion, and guilt. So many nameless emotions wracked through his body, talking about it for the first time. In many ways, he felt the scene being played out behind his eyelids. Everything in him, all of his senses flashed back to that horrible day.

"He pummeled her furiously until she stopped crying, stopped moving, stopped breathing. She was so pale, so the thousands of sickly colors stood out boldly. For a moment, he looked surprised, and then he stormed to my room. It was as if he had prepared for this kind of situation. I barely had the time to jump into bed and pretend to be asleep. Really, it's disgusting that I even did that. Then again, we were a family based on lies, on appearances. If we didn't look good, then we had nothing. So instinct dictated that I look unaware of everything."

"He grabbed me by the back of the neck and threw me out of my bed, and onto the floor. Told me that I needed to do something with him, that I should think of it as father-son bonding time. No one in the family knew how to say no. I just let myself get dragged out to the woods behind our house. We must've walked for a half of a mile in the pitch dark through the woods. I walked in front, and he carried the shovels behind me, swinging them back and forth as if it was a game to see how many times he hit my legs before I crumpled and dropped her. He made me carry her body."

"We buried her in the woods. It took us hours to dig the hole. He hit me in the legs with that shovel so many times, I was bleeding and limping by the time I climbed out of that hole. He kept lecturing me that if I was going to be a man, I had to keep control. I had to be tough. I couldn't be weak like I was. I had to be a man. Be a man! BE A MAN!" Ryan hadn't realized he was shouting until he felt the stab in his throat. He was still shaking horribly, and refused to look anywhere besides the water. When he began again, his voice was barely audible. "All I could think was that I was burying my baby sister. I tried to protect her, and ended up burying her instead."

"The next morning Dad called the cops to report her missing. He went through the whole process too, broke a window, ran through a story with Mom, threatened me not to tell the truth, and then told Tessa and Beth that Ashleigh had been kidnapped. Then we weren't allowed to mention her. The cops ran this pathetic three week search, but when no ransom was made, they dropped it. It was like Dad managed to wipe her from existence." Finally, he shuddered one last time and sat up, straightening his spine. He hastily tried to put himself back together by swiping hurriedly at his eyes, and clearing his throat to rid it of its dryness.

"The cops at the time didn't make the connection between your mother's punctured lung and her kidnapped daughter?" Esposito asked incredulously, shocked that the police could be such morons. It was one thing not caring enough to look into things further, but that was plain moronic.

"Nah man. He said that she woke up with a nightmare, Mom went with her to the kitchen to get a glass of water and that's when the kidnapper attacked from behind. It was ridiculous."

"What happened afterwards?" Esposito asked warily, almost afraid to know the answer.

"Things went back to the way they were for about a month and a half before Mom finally got the courage to run away. We escaped to Boston and I went to college nearby to help Mom with Tessa and Beth. Then when they were old enough and I was out of school, the first place I went was New York City. And I never left."

"You never found out what happened to your father?" At Esposito's question, Ryan finally turned to face him, with some mixed and confused emotion on his face.

"I may be a detective now, and have the license to carry a gun, but he's still the undefeatable monster he was when I was eight years old. No, I could never go back." Ryan met Esposito's speechless eyes for a moment or two, before sighing and slowly standing up. "We've got an early morning tomorrow, so I should probably go home and get some sleep. After all, knowing Beckett, she'll call us in at an ungodly hour to run down some breakthrough."

The words seemed to snap Esposito out of a trace state and he managed to stand up too and reply to Ryan's comment, albeit halfheartedly. "I don't know about you bro, but if Beckett calls at four in the morning, I'm letting it go to voicemail."

"Ditto."

Ryan was the first to start walking out of the park, and after a few moments, Esposito began walking too, but in a different direction, back to his own apartment. Despite what he had said to Ryan just seconds ago, he knew one thing for sure; there was no way he was getting to sleep tonight.

* * *

**So, there's your story. Please let me know what you think.**

** As for the next chapter title:**

** Chapter Seventen: Brace for Impact**


	17. Brace for Impact

**Oh my God, guys I am _SO _sorry for the delay! I've just been so sucked up in schoolwork that I haven't had time to update. But I got a ton of fantastic replies from you and I loved it! I was happily surprised to see how many people have come to care about my characters so much! So this chapter is for everyone who reviewed last chapter.**

**Also, I have to dedicate this chapter to Anashya, who was my Jenny after Nana passed away, and to Catherine, who's always willing to throw popcorn at the TV with me when we're watching romance movies and the main characters do stupid things. I love both of you!**

**Chapter Seventeen: Brace for Impact**

He knew the path to his apartment so well that he was able to carry himself back in the direction he needed to go in, but if someone had asked him where he was, he would have no clue. He probably wouldn't even hear the person when they asked him. His mind was racing with the new information. Out of everything he had half expected, and let himself guess, he wouldn't have guessed that his father was abusive. It was unreal, and yet, when he looked at the evidence now, it was the only thing he could think of that made any sense.

Esposito expected some huge rush of emotion, but at the moment, his brain couldn't take the time to settle on any one or two emotions. It couldn't make up its mind between thousands of feelings and all of their grayscales, so it simply felt nothing, and tried to process what it had just heard.

His best friend, his partner, practically his brother. This was the guy who he watched football with, and played video games with, and caught bad guys with. This is the guy who invited him to his family's house for the fourth of July. Was that guy the same guy he thought he knew?

Of course it was. He had just learned something new about that guy. But it wasn't like "oh, by the way, I tried crack once in college;" it was "oh, by the way, I spent more than half of my childhood being tortured by my father and protecting my family." How could he possibly react to that? What could he possibly say in response to that? There are no words. It's as simple as that; there are no words. He wanted the truth and now he had it. So why did his stomach feel like it was devouring itself in anger?

Because he dealt with the worst of humanity daily, and it had become normal for him. The team bantered over gallows humor, and made quips that others would call morbid, and not be fazed by a dead body or a blood bath. He had quite successfully desensitized himself to death and the despicable that call themselves people. He hadn't thought that anything could shock him anymore. But this was his partner, and the very worst happened to him. It was like there was no stopping the evils people inflict on each other. He had his safety zone, and it had just been breached one too many times.

Esposito knew how to compartmentalize expertly, so that his personal emotions didn't bleed into his work life. He knew better than a lot of cops how to remove biases and prejudices from the job.

But he felt those sturdy walls starting to decompose and break down into dust, and finally everything broke through.

Fury, sadness, contempt, grief, resentment, regret, fear, torment, confusion, shock, shame, disbelief, hatred, remorse, uncertainty, doubt, disgust, horror, misery, empathy, and loathing flooded through him. After thousands of cases solved, tons of psychology lessons, thousands of bad guys encountered, he still had no clue how the hell anyone could knowingly do that to a child, let alone your own child. Let alone his partner.

Vaguely, he was aware of opening up the door to his apartment, and heading to the kitchen. Just like he predicted, the beers were still there, now warm. The pizza was still sitting in its box uneaten. Mechanically, Esposito stuck the pizza slices into a large Ziploc bag, and into the fridge, along with the beers. They'd be eaten at some point but tonight was not that night, and it never had been.

He ran through the motions of the nighttime routine and collapsed on the bed. Not out of physical exhaustion, but solely an emotional fatigue. It was not one that sleep would cure. Therefore, he was doomed to staring at the ceiling, and subjecting himself to the racing of his mind, trying to make sense of everything he had learned.

•••

She didn't know what to make of the events of last night, but she knew enough to know not to go over again tonight. If not for the conventional reasons of video games night, because of whatever was going on with Kevin.

She couldn't help but be the slightest bit jealous of this Ashleigh that he cared so much about. Whoever this woman was, she seemed more prevalent in Kevin's mind than herself. And even though she didn't want to make assumptions that would end up being far from the truth, the mystery of something she didn't know was worrying her.

She really cared about Kevin, but she wasn't sure where they were. They had been going out for a couple of months more than a year, but she didn't know where she stood with him, especially now. She had come to accept that he had nightmares often, and was a bit of an insomniac, but if that screaming nightmare was going to become frequent, she didn't know how to deal with that.

The medical examiner and Kevin's partner had been very sweet and helpful, but she didn't know either of them well enough to call them up just to ask what was going on. While she hoped someone would fill her in, it felt as if Kevin wasn't going to want to talk about it.

Jenny brought herself out of her thoughts, and refocused on the lasagna cooking in the oven. She had never been able to break the college habit she had of eating dinners long past 11:00 at night. It looked fully cooked, so she pulled it out and tested it. It was done, so she pulled a knife out of a drawer, and cut herself a piece, immediately covering the rest of it in aluminum foil.

Just as she sat down to dinner, her phone rang. She considered letting it go to voicemail, but thought better of it almost immediately and ran to pick it up. She licked a bit of sauce off her thumb as she picked up the cordless phone, and answered with a standard hello.

"Can you come over? I really need you here right now." She barely recognized Kevin's voice. It was so quiet and scared. He sounded like little boy who accidentally broke a flower vase and expected to be punished. She immediately worried for him.

"Yeah, of course. Is everything alright?" she asked fearfully.

"No."

"I'll be there in five," she answered quickly, her worry had made way for a full fledged panic at the single miserable word that she had gotten from her question. She hung up suddenly, and grabbed her cell phone and keys as she rushed out the door. Somehow, she managed to hail a cab, even though it was so late. She gave the address to the cab and only once he got moving did she allow herself a moment to look at the clock. It was well past midnight. She didn't care.

Everyone in his building knew her well enough not to ask her who she was going up to meet and she rushed up the stairs two at a time, suddenly glad that she worked out so often. She was barely out of breath when she pushed open the door to his floor, and made her way to his door. She tried not to seem too nervous as she slid the key he had given her into the keyhole. He probably needed comfort of some kind, and it wouldn't help him at all if she came in panicking.

The door swung open and she saw him immediately move from an anxious waiting on his couch to a standing position. His eyes were puffy and red; he had been crying. She didn't know what to do, except keep standing there, and close the door behind her. Luckily, she didn't have to do anything because he walked over to her slowly and cautiously. When he stood less than a foot away from her, she took the moment to fully look at him; he had huge dark circles under his eyes which stood out against the deathly pale skin, and up close his bloodshot eyes looked even worse. He was trembling slightly.

He made the first move to break the boundary separating them. Slowly he bent down, and moved closer to her, and before she knew what had happened, he had wrapped her up in a tight hug, and was shaking, crying silently into her shoulder. She reacted immediately and hugged him just as tightly, rocking him slightly. That image of a little boy she sometimes had of him was back, but she had never seen this side of it before.

Expertly, she moved him to the bedroom, where he continued to cry into her shoulder, not breaking the clutch he had on her for an instant. She shushed him slowly and rhythmically, not for the purposes of quieting him, but as a comforting mantra, and whispered soothing words such as "it's okay" into his ears while rubbing his back and head slowly.

"What happened? Please, what's upsetting you?" she begged him to tell her, and she felt him sag into her deeper in a way that she thought looked a lot like guilt.

"Not now. Please not now," he whimpered softly into her neck. "I promise I'll tell you, but not... I just… I can't tell it again tonight. Please, I can't."

She heard him break down more with each word, as if she wouldn't accept that for an answer. She tried desperately to calm him down with a nod. "Whenever you're ready."

She kept holding him like that for the rest of the night, not moving from the position they were in where he held close to her in a wild sort of desperation, asking her to protect him from whatever was scaring him. And she protected him from his demons until the wee hours of the next morning, when he finally drifted off into an exhausted sleep. She refused to let herself doze off for even a moment, even after he managed to; she was too busy convincing herself that he would be okay.

•••

Kate Beckett got a call early the next morning from Jessie, and though it wasn't as early as she had woken up a few days ago, she still resented the early wake-up call. She looked at her cell phone and didn't recognize the number so she answered it tentatively.

"Beckett,"

"Um, hullo. This is Jessie, Jessie Palmer. Do you remember me? I babysat for Kayla." The girl anxiously clarified who she was, and Beckett was suddenly awake.

"Jessie. Hi. Did your boyfriend make contact with you?" She got straight to the point, not trying to avoid the fact that this was the reason she called.

"Uh, yeah. He's back at school, and texted me just a few minutes ago. I haven't responded yet. What should I do?"

"Don't do anything. I'm going to need to talk to him, but just to ask if he heard anything unusual while he was babysitting. Most likely he'll just confirm our timeline, and possibly fill it in a bit more, and we'll be done by the time early classes start."

Beckett decided not to tell Jessie that he was the main suspect in their murder investigation. After all, most people would freak out when they heard that. She allowed herself a few more moments of precious time to just lay in bed with her eyes shut before she sat up and proceeded to make the calls.

She wasn't sure whether or not to call Castle. After all, he was only supposed to fill in for Esposito while he was taking his day off. After a moment of deliberation, she pressed speed dial #4 and put the phone up to her ear.

"Esposito," the voice on the phone said with a yawn that could rival a zombie's moans.

"You sound like you've had a fabulous night's rest," she quipped at him with a bit of humor in her voice.

"Had stuff on my mind,"

"Kay," she accepted the answer, even though she knew that it wasn't the truth. If he was lying to her, it was either unimportant or not something he wanted to talk about. And if Esposito didn't want to talk about something, no force in the world could get him to talk. "Boyfriend's back in town. I'm going to pick him up, and I expect you to be in by 7:00. Got it?"

"You got it, O Captain my Captain." The grumbled reply was. But before Beckett could hang up and call Ryan to drag him in, Esposito spoke up again. "You calling Castle in today?"

"I wasn't planning on it," she said slowly, not liking that Esposito could somehow read her thoughts.

"Why not?"

"He was only stepping in while you took your day off. He should be back in the Hamptons by now," she reasoned it out for herself as much as she did for Esposito.

"Well you might want to tell him that, because he's still in New York, and I doubt he'll step off the case now that he's part of it. At least, not for the next two days."

"Why? What happens in two days?" she asked out of curiosity.

"Alexis gets back from her summer program, and they planned to go to the Hamptons together. But until then, I doubt that he'd want to be left out of the loop." Esposito sighed through the phone when she didn't reply right away. "Just call him, okay?"

"Why do you want Castle to stay so bad? Miss your boyfriend?" she snapped back, proud enough with her reply.

"Just think he'd be good on the case, and with Ryan and everything, I want to close it quickly."

"Uh-huh," Beckett said understandingly. But then a look of suspicion flashed over her face and she figured out what this was. "There's a pool going on, isn't there?"

"Kinda, yeah," Well, at least he was honest with her. "But I'm serious, we should close this quick, and any help we can get would be great."

"I hear ya, I hear ya," she grumbled, annoyed at the logic of the argument. "I'll call."

"See you in a few." A click followed shortly after Esposito's words. Even when exhausted and clearly focused on something else, he still managed to sound smug. She grumbled at him as she pressed speed dial #7. Why did Esposito have to be such a pain in the ass sometimes? Well, she took comfort in the fact that if nothing else, she knew exactly who she was going to make work extra hours this weekend.

"Good morning Detective Beckett, do we have a lead?" Esposito hadn't put her in the best of moods, so she wasn't as tolerant of Castle's cheery morning voice as she normally was.

"How are you so awake? It's 6:30 am!"

"I just so happen to be a morning person. Plus, I had hoped you'd let me see this case through, even though I was just supposed to be a substitute detective."

"Any crazy theories yet Castle?" she asked, hoping to get a laugh out of what he could come up with.

"Yes, aliens kidnapped her for weird experiments, and then dropped her body in Gramercy Park to throw suspicion off themselves. The one question is, how did they get her out of the house without anyone noticing?"

"Oh that's easy," she lightly quipped back, feeling a smile growing on her face. "Scotty beamed her up."

"Oh my God you have no idea how hot that is!" he said in fascination, probably trying to imagine her watching Star Trek.

"Imagine if I had started talking about Jabba the Hut and the gold bikini," she teased more, surprised at how easy it was to fall back into the old habits of teasing each other. It was a bit of a comfort that the events of last June hadn't caused a rift in their friendship and partnership.

"Marry me,"

Nope, never mind. There was the awkward tense rift between the two of them. Then again, that was nothing new. Every now and then, he'd pull out some random awkward comment and she'd have no clue what to say. But all of those instances were suddenly dwarfed by this one. And since it was over the phone, Ryan and Esposito couldn't just walk in and break up the tension.

"Anyway, I just called to tell you that the boyfriend is back in the city, so it's time to finally make an arrest. Who knows, if we're lucky we might be able to catch the little bastard."

"Should I bring popcorn?" she was relieved when he dropped the previous topic and focused on the case.

"Please don't, you're going to need to help us finish off that inordinate barrel of taffy that you sent us, so that's going to be the majority of our food intake for the next several weeks."

"Yeah, but I'm not about to throw those gifts from the gods at the window with the guys when our dirtbag comes up with a pathetic alibi." he said it as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

"So it was you who left all those popcorn kernels on the floor!" She was indignant. She had been the one to pick them up off the floor when she stepped on them. Many occasions she found unpopped popcorn kernels on the floor by the glasses. Now she knew why.

"No!" she waited for the pathetic defense she was expecting. "Montgomery helps sometimes too."

And that's where she had no words. She knew that Montgomery wasn't like most bosses, but she was shocked to hear that he'd actually throw popcorn at the glass, like it was a bad movie. It just seemed so… juvenile. Then again, Castle did have that effect on people.

"See you at the precinct. First one there makes coffee," and he had hung up before she got a word in edgewise. Grinning slightly, she pressed the end button, and allowed herself a moment to collect herself before putting on a professional attitude again, heading out of her bedroom and towards the kitchen, and pressing speed dial #5.

"Hello?" Beckett's face contorted into one of confusion and surprise at the clearly female voice coming from the other line.

"Um, who is this?" she asked in confusion, not writing it off as a wrong number. After all, it was a speed dial.

"Oh, sorry. It's Jenny. Ryan's girlfriend. This is Detective Beckett, right?" Beckett's nerves eased a little. Ryan's cell phone hadn't been stolen by some woman off the street. But that begged the question – why wasn't Ryan awake and why was Jenny answering for him?

"Uh, yeah. I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound rude, but…"

"Why are you talking to the girlfriend of your coworker when you called for your coworker?" she finished Beckett's sentence for her, and the only response the detective had was a nervous laugh.

"Yeah."

"Well, Kevin called me last night completely distressed about something. He wouldn't talk about it though, so I have no clue what it is. I'd never seen him like that before; it was scary. He only just got to sleep a few hours ago, and I think he could really use a few more hours. Would it be terribly rude for me to ask to let him sleep for as long as he can? Knowing Kevin, he'll be awake fairly soon anyway."

Beckett tried to process all of the information she had just gotten from that answer before carefully coming up with a response. "Sure, that'd be fine. We all know Ryan's been under a lot of stress lately. As long as he comes in as soon as he can. We could really use him down here."

"Thank you so much Detective. I know how hard you all work, and it seems like he never takes any time off to just de-stress. Good luck on your case."

"Thanks," she said awkwardly to the woman before hanging up. How sad was it that she didn't know how to communicate to people not in the force or part of a murder investigation? She tried not to think about her disintegrating social skills; just like she tried hard not to think of what happened to Ryan to scare him so badly last night.

Getting to work, Beckett began to go through the usual ritual of walking through the elevator doors to the precinct, dropping her purse under her desk, and sitting down in her chair to search the counter for post-it notes reminding her of leads she wanted to follow or things that had to be done. Even though she knew Castle was back, she was happily surprised to find a cup of coffee and a bear claw resting right in front of her computer.

"So, where are we today?" she heard Castle ask her as he walked over to her desk and took his place in the chair next to it.

"What?"

"How many guys do we have today? All four, right? I brought the popcorn kernels!" he waved a bag of microwavable popcorn to accentuate his point, and Beckett shot her typical "really?" stare at him before going back to her computer.

"Actually, Ryan might be taking some of the morning off. When I called, his girlfriend picked up. She said he had just gotten to sleep a few hours ago."

"Uh-oh," Castle voiced Beckett's concerns perfectly. Then he paused for a moment, frowned thoughtfully, and then opened his mouth again, this time looking more upset than concerned. "Wait, is that why you called me in today? Because Ryan's out?"

"We need to close this case quickly," she began very ambiguously. She didn't want to answer that question. "For plenty of different reasons. You know that."

She almost felt guilty when she saw the almost imperceptible sagging of his shoulders and the flash of hurt on his face, but not completely. Even though it was completely irrational, she was still upset with him for running off to the Hamptons with his ex-wife with no forewarning whatsoever. He didn't see it when her shoulders sagged, so why should she just inflate his ego whenever he gave her the opportunity. If he deserved it, maybe...

"Okay, so let's go pick up this boyfriend. Why wait for Esposito?"

"Uniforms are getting him right now. At the moment we don't have enough to arrest him. When he left from the lobby he didn't have a backpack or anything, and we have no motive. Just opportunity. So it's not an arrest, just bringing him in for questioning."

"M'kay," Castle nodded in the way that suggested that he was about to bring some brilliant idea to the table. "So, where are you on the list of registered sex offenders?"

"It's been backed up for days, but we should get results soon. Why?"

"You guys seem to be focusing on the murder too much. You have to remember that it's a package deal; rape _and _murder. Not to mention he dropped her afterwards. This doesn't have to be a motive thing. Honestly, do you think we're going to find one in the boyfriend?" She was mildly surprised. Castle was usually fixated on motive; it was strange to see him stop looking for it.

"He dropped her in a private park that doesn't let people in past 10 pm. That planning takes more than most sex offenders have."

"Think about it; that's what makes the most sense right now. I'm not saying drop all of our other leads; I'm just saying follow that one a bit more." She paused a minute and looked at him. He had a bit of a point.

Karpowski," she called to the researcher who sometimes worked on their cases with them. "How's the sex offender's list coming?"

"Let me check," she answered back nonchalantly, as she often was, and picked up her desk phone. The woman would be a fantastic detective, but she didn't have too much drive for it. She was a great researcher, and a great help to whichever team needed her, but wasn't interested in field work, and fairly indifferent to the cases. That's why it was just work for her, not "the job."

"Yo, Karpowski already running stuff down? Is this a lead I smell?" Esposito called over to them as he dropped his unnecessary coat on the floor and headed over to join them.

"Just following up on a possibility you overlooked," Castle said smugly, and Beckett rolled her eyes at the man.

"Couldn't follow," Beckett clarified. "He's taking the sex offender route."

Esposito nodded in understanding, but then a look crossed his face darkly that suggested that he was unsure.

"I take that look to mean that there's news on the Ryan front," Castle asked carefully.

"Oh there's news alright, but not something I can't tell you. He's gotta tell you himself; this isn't one I can just give away." His lips were pressed together in a tight line, and he had that serious face on. Beckett was afraid of what could've possibly happened.

She had always been very obviously the wounded cop at the precinct. Though most of the worst details had been kindly omitted from the public knowledge, everyone was aware of her mother's murder and how hard she worked those first two years to solve that case. Montgomery had been so sympathetic and helpful when she started out, and every time the murders were a little too similar her mother's, her team knew to offer her space, suggestions, support, and whatever she needed. They were solid. Montgomery had set up a fantastic team of brilliant minds that worked well together.

Beckett hadn't ever thought that anyone else at the precinct was one of those "wounded avengers" that Castle made her out to be. She would've never guessed that it was Ryan who was another one, most likely with a worse story than her. He was always so sympathetic when she was hurting, so stable at the job, fell so easily into the banter and gallows humor. Never once did he get resentful, or over-emotional, or lose it. He was always the calm easy-going one. He was the sweet guy who sometimes didn't think before he spoke, but was loyal to the end and kind beyond belief. Unlike Esposito's more confrontational sympathy, Ryan gave her space but silently left the opportunity to talk open. He never lost his head, at least, not in front of them. She had underestimated one of her team members a lot, and was afraid to find out where the desperation for the disguise came from.

"Hey Beckett, we got a hit," Karpowski called over to her with… was that excitement? Beckett spared a second to look at Castle's smug face before rushing over to the curly-haired woman's desk. "Meet Madock "Mad" Maynard."

Castle and Beckett stared into the face of a broad-shouldered man who badly needed to be introduced to the concept of shaving snarling at the camera.

"I like him already," Castle muttered over her shoulder.

"The name sure seems to fit," Beckett agreed before turning her attention back to Karpowski.

"Two counts of misdemeanor drug possession, one of selling roofies to minors, and the cake topper: he did two years for harassing some children in public a few years back. He's got a thing for little girls."

"Looking very appealing Karpowski; if only we had some connection to the case, I'd like him a lot more,"

"Like how the public area he harassed those girls was in Gramercy Park? And they never confiscated the key? Or you could go the other route and comment on the fact that he got out a few months back. I loved the coincidence so I did some digging and found out that over the past five weeks there have been a number of complaints filed by mothers, all complaining about a man matching Maynard's description lurking around the park anywhere between 4-6 pm every couple of days."

"Nice job Karpowski. Do we know where he is?"

"I can do you one better; he's downstairs right now," the woman said smugly; she seemed very proud at Beckett's face of confusion. She decided to clarify. "He skipped parole."

"Great. The boyfriend's not here yet. I bet we can interrogate Maynard quickly beforehand," Beckett smirked at Castle, who lit up like a little boy on Christmas morning.

"I'll get the popcorn!"

•••

Ryan walked into the precinct only to see Beckett escorting an unfamiliar thug into the box. He had only overslept a half an hour, and he'd already missed something huge. Seeing Castle, Esposito, and Montgomery all hovering behind the glass, he decided to ask what was going on.

"Get to work thirty minutes late and you miss everything. Who's this thug?" He asked the guys who looked surprised at his arrival. Maybe Jenny gave Beckett the impression that he'd be taking the entire morning off, so he shrugged it off, just like everyone else did instantaneously.

"We're following what should've been an early lead," Esposito summed up. "Mad Maynard. Has a history of harassing little girls, and has been stalking Gramercy for the past month around the time Kayla usually went. Turns out the babysitter made a complaint about him."

"Do we like him?"Ryan asked tentatively. He wasn't sure if he preferred the unrelated sex offender for the murder or not. He preferred the idea on some levels, but on others it made the entire thing avoidable, and pointless, and stupid.

"Not sure yet. No definite connection to Kayla yet, because those complaints were conveyed anonymously. Still, it's gonna be a fun interrogation. I brought popcorn!" Castle replied, his voice getting more light-hearted as the sentence went on. Ryan's tense mind eased greatly, and let his face melt into a wide grin with his partner's similar smile.

"Hold up," Montgomery cut in with the voice of a caring parent lecturing a child on why what they did was wrong. "I don't want to explain stains on the glass again."

"Don't worry, I brought the unbuttered, unsalted kind this time," Castle amended with another grin. All three men looked at the Captain expectantly. At that moment, they saw Beckett step into the box where Maynard sat angrily.

"Then crack it open and hand it over."

At Montgomery's say-so Castle revealed three more bags and handed a bag to each man. The table had already been dragged over to the window, and all four men were leaning on it casually. Without attracting attention, Ryan popped a kernel in his mouth and sucked on it, letting it get soft and dragging the flavor out of the unpopped corn slowly.

After they got to Boston and everyone began healing, they started catching up on all of the things they'd missed out on, such as family movie nights. More often than not, he'd be suckered into chick flicks, but he didn't mind too much. At the time, he couldn't handle typical boy explosion-after-explosion gun toting adventure movies. He was still overcoming everything, so he didn't mind romantic comedies and Disney movies.

When the popcorn was done and only the kernels were left, his Mom had taught them a childhood trick that she'd learned about how to eat the kernels by rolling them in between their back teeth and sucking on them. It was one of the few motherly things that she'd ever done, and Ryan still loved sucking on the popcorn kernels. Esposito and Castle teased him about it when they found out he did it, so he only ate the kernels in secret now.

"Mr. Maynard, you've been advised of your rights. So tell me, where were you between 8 and 11 pm three nights ago?" Beckett asked with the in-control voice she used with most of the dirtbags like Maynard.

"Why, where was I supposed to be?"

"Just answer the question."

"Am I under arrest?"

"If you don't start talking, yeah you will be."

"For what?"

"For murder," Beckett said simply. Everyone remained stony-faced while he laughed it off.

"Actually, I was asleep. At home. Alone." Castle, Ryan, and Esposito all groaned in unison, Castle shaking his head. Each man threw the small handful at the spot at the glass where his face was. A strategically placed garbage bin was positioned below for most of the stray kernels to fall into after they hit the glass.

"Well, I've got a girl found dead at Gramercy Park, and she seems just your type. And we checked your building. No one remembers seeing you last night."

"The place isn't exactly pre-school. We don't all go to the playground and hang out with each other. I didn't see anyone from my building either. Could you identify everyone who lives in your building?"

Esposito groaned on Ryan's left and threw a larger handful of popcorn at the guy. "He used the New York excuse,"

"Well, he lived in a tenement; there wouldn't exactly be doormen or security cameras," all three men turned to stare at the Captain curiously when he defended the guy.

"Montgomery, you defending him?"

"There's a possibility that no one saw him. But I want all the facts straight before we close this, no overlooking anything,"

Ryan nodded solemnly, but inside he was struggling. He had a feeling already that this was a dead end, and that the boyfriend would be more helpful than he was. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nick Porter being ushered into the free interrogation room to the left of them. He peered through the glass to see him sit down in the chair. Once Beckett got through with Maynard she'd go directly to Porter.

"We had a feeling that you'd recognize our victim. You might've crossed paths with her when you went to Gramercy Park." Beckett pulled out a picture from the crime scene that had a close-up on Kayla's face. Ryan forced himself not to look at the picture for fear of seeing Ashleigh's broken face in his sore arms. Instead, he focused on Maynard's face, searching for anything.

"She seems familiar, but no one I knew personally. Just someone I passed on the street. Never really noticed her." Ryan and Esposito both threw popcorn at the glass in frustration. Some whack jobs like Maynard just liked the dance of questionings, and had been through enough to know his rights, and what to say. Those were the hardest to break.

"Well, she would be right up your alley, and would fit with your rap sheet. Why should I believe that you didn't break into her apartment, kidnap her from her bed, rape her, then kill her and dump her body so you wouldn't be looking at kidnapping charges?" Beckett said angrily, with that same control over her emotions. "Your alibi is weak at best. We have plenty of previous meetings that would suggest you knew or could learn where she lived and could figure out her schedule. Her babysitter filed a complaint against you. You fit with exactly who we're looking for. Why wouldn't a jury convict you? If you want to avoid that, you'd better start talking."

"See those jammies, lady? They're nice. Pink silk with little lacy stuff around the seams; yeah, it's probably that synthetic silk, but it's still nice. I'm guessing the kid lived in a nice place with a video camera at the doors. If I slipped in and out, you'd notice me; I doubt I'd blend well. Besides, how would I get her body out?"

"There's a fire escape. It was a warm night; the window was open. You could've easily climbed up and snuck in and out without anyone noticing."

The sudden long laugh from Maynard shocked everybody. It wasn't just bravado either, Ryan noted; there was honest humor in his expression. He bit down on the popcorn kernel now soft enough not to break his teeth, and chewed a couple of times before swallowing. Secretly, he slipped another into his mouth, and immediately clenched his teeth down around the small kernel. It didn't split, but with just a bit more pressure, he knew that it would.

"You think I climbed up the fire escape? Wow, you must not have done your research very well," Maynard then turned to the side of his chair and brought his legs out from under the table. Smirking, he pulled up his left pant leg to show a brace around his ankle. Simultaneously, all four men threw a large handful of popcorn at the window, and Beckett turned around to face the glass for a moment with an eyebrow raised.

"Broke it three weeks ago and have been in crutches since. The day your girl was murdered I went to the hospital to get the cast off and they put me in a brace and told me to keep off it for the next couple of days. I took a taxi home at around 7:30, and didn't leave for the rest of the night. I'm not your guy, but nice try sweetie."

At the term of endearment that sounded disgusting coming from Maynard, he saw Castle, who was sitting on his right, throw a small handful at his face. Ryan bit down on the popcorn kernel, and swallowed quickly. They saw Beckett wrap up the questioning and walk out, heading for them. At the last minute, they wrapped up the rest of their popcorn, and casually tried to block it from Beckett's view. They each had about half of a bag left, and wouldn't mind using them for the boyfriend's interview.

"I have a feeling he's not our guy, but let's confirm that. Ryan, check the hospital records to see if he was telling the truth. Esposito, call the cab company and see if they recognize him." Beckett said straight to business. The partners nodded and left the room to run things down. It would take ten minutes tops, but despite it, Beckett was impatient. She rattled off lists in her mind about what she was missing before a big one popped. She pulled out her phone and made a quick call to get the permission she needed.

"Hey Karpowski," she called over to the researcher for the second time that day. "get CSU over to the apartment, I want to know if she was killed there or not."

•••

"May I please sit in for this one!" Castle begged in his normal little boy voice. He had been watching from the bleachers since he came back to substitute on the case, and now that all of them were back, he wanted a shot at the questioning again. "I haven't been in the box at all so far, and I can be helpful."

"You were there when I confronted Jessie and Ms. Linden," Beckett protested lightly.

"You confronted the babysitter _at her house. _That so doesn't count as questioning in the interrogation room, and Pam Linden? I sat in a corner and didn't say a word!"

Castle wanted to be on the case, and hated that he was just a substitute cop. Beckett had made that point pretty clear this morning. He came to help because Esposito asked him to while he took a day off. Beckett invited him back the next day because she thought Ryan was taking the morning off. Even though he knew how skewed his line of thinking was, he believed that if Beckett let him assist her in the interrogation room, she'd remember how good they were together as partners, and let him finish out the case.

"Why don't you want me in the interrogation with you?" he asked curiously.

"Why do you want to go in so much?" she shot back with as much accusation as he had shown hurt.

Castle was stuck with how to respond. He couldn't give her the real answer, that he wanted to be included in the detective's line of work as well as in her life, even if Demming beat him to the slot he wanted to fill he was eager to play some role. How could he say "I want you to notice me" without sounding pathetic? There was no way. So he took the easy way out.

"As much fun as throwing popcorn at suspects is, it turns out that picking them up is just tedious. This way, I can do something!"

•••

Beckett couldn't help looking up at him with a hint of fondness. Not that she'd let it show, but it was still nice. He was taller than most of the guys at the precinct, and easily a half a foot taller than her, and she was tall for a woman. Yet somehow, his height didn't stop him from looking like an adorable seven year-old. Or maybe he was a puppy; excitable, loyal, playful, teasing, affectionate, and she hated to admit it, but lovable. Yep, he was a very tall puppy.

Her mind flashed to the Princess Bride, and the ROUS's. She couldn't help the small upwards tweak of her mouth when she thought that Castle was a puppy of unusual size. A POUS? The smile grew at the thought. She had after all, once told him that he reminded her of Hooch. Yep, Castle was definitely a POUS.

Not like she'd ever tell him that.

"Fine, if it'll keep the popcorn off the floor, you can sit in with me," she said, not sure if she regretted her decision the moment Castle reacted. His face lit up excitedly and he hissed out a "yes!" while fist-bumping the air. No, she didn't think she regretted it. "Just, try to keep a serious face, okay Castle?"

"Yo, story checks," Esposito called over to them as he and Ryan headed back to the interrogation room. "Taxi service has him limping into his building at 7:42 pm with his ankle in a brace."

"Ryan?" Beckett turns to Esposito's partner for confirmation.

"Hospital confirms it. He's not allowed to walk around much for the next few days. No way he'd be climbing ladders."

Beckett turned to Castle smugly, and shot him a sardonic smile. "And now we're back to where we started. Happy?" Unexpectedly, the writer held her gaze with a cheery smile of his own.

"Very," he clipped the word so it sounded even more chirpy. Then his eyes widened, and he turned into that puppy again. "Now, let's go interrogate this boyfriend!"

* * *

**Next chapter comes Nick Porter's interrogation. Let me know what you think Beckett will learn from that. Also, what do you think about Ryan's interaction with Jenny, and Castle and Beckett's interactions. And also, do you think that I was being realistic with Montgomery joining in the popcorn throwing?**

** Reviews are love, and I'm a little short on that right now, so if you liked the chapter then it'd be fantastic if you could leave a review!**


	18. A Swing, a Hit, and a Miss

**So, somehow I went from having fifteen reviews a chapter down to five reviews a chapter. Anyone know how that happened? Well regardless, chapter seventeen has bumped up my review count into the triple digits, so thanks guys! Keep on reviewing.**

**This one is a shout-out to Billy, my brother and the _original _POUS. **

**Chapter Eighteen: A Swing, a Hit, and a Miss**

Beckett pretended not to notice Castle shoot Ryan a sympathetic look and hand him a half full bag of popcorn kernels. At the simple gesture Beckett had to chew on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from grinning.

She only had her father left in her blood family, but it felt like larger because of her team. They were a family. She still remembered when Castle came into the group for the first time and began feeling out the precinct life she was beyond reserved about the entire thing. Everyone else adjusted to Castle quickly but it took her much longer to get comfortable enough to let her guard down around the writer. Then at the beginning of the summer she was sure that they had lost the honorary member of the team for good. Everyone was upset about it; it really was like losing a family member.

Watching him joking around with her team and looking out for Ryan in the very subtle way that men do reaffirmed his loyalty to her. At the beginning she was able to write off his research as trying to make a move on her, and then later she thought she could blame it on the wilder cases and the female detective. But he had befriended her boys, the Captain, and Lanie. That's a lot of effort to try and get someone into bed with them.

She had almost forgotten about how good he was with everyone, and how much fun he brought to the precinct. The espresso machine and the ridiculous barrel of taffy also reminded her of how much he really enjoyed being here, just to be here.

And how had that night after the Racine case slipped her mind? Both Ryan and Esposito went home as soon as they were able, and she stayed late to write up the paperwork closing the case. He had volunteered to deal with paperwork to help get Esposito off the hook, and cut her workload near in half. They had spent the next four hours working and joking over Chinese food. That had been before Demming really started intervening, so there was almost no discomfort. The subject of the handsome robbery detective was easily skirted, replaced by banter, complaints from Castle about paperwork, and sharing stories about the past that was easier to talk about.

But it was _Castle, _and she had seen how many women he went through in those two years, and she saw it as a warning. Get involved with Castle and she'd just become a tally mark on a wall, or a trophy on a shelf. She didn't want to go there.

"So, if you hear what sounds like a small hailstorm coming from behind us, don't be alarmed," the unexpected voice right behind her made her jump in alarm. All previous thoughts were shoved from her brain for her own good. If the writer noticed he didn't say a thing, which she was thankful for. "So, what method are you going to use this time?"

"We've got nothing on him but proof that he was there. I'm going to treat it like another questioning. Try not to chime in too much, it might alert him. Only ask something if it's important."

"As you wish, Detective," she hoped that he didn't see her most likely physical reaction to the Princess Bride connection. She hadn't told anyone about her conclusion that Castle was a POUS, so there was no possible way he could be teasing her with it knowingly. He did tend to come up with these chivalrous phrases on occasion, so it was probably just coincidence. Still, that knowledge didn't much help her mind calm down.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she put on her mask of stony resolve, and opened the door to the Interrogation Room. Sitting there was a kid, no older than twenty-one years old with a confused and annoyed expression on his face.

"You know your thugs dumped me in here forever ago? If you were going to drag me out of class for this, you might have the courtesy to make this quick." The aggravated voice of the boy automatically triggered something in Beckett's head. She already didn't like the guy.

Most kids get nervous when they're dragged down to a police station without warning or explanation, not irritated. Criminals were the ones trying to get into pissing fights with the detectives the moment they walk into the box. He had one strike against him.

"My apologies, we were in the middle of something and finished it as soon as we could. But for now, can you tell me where you were between 6:30 and 9pm three nights ago?"

He paused for a quick moment, but nowhere near long enough for Beckett to believe he was actually trying to figure out which day that was, and what he was doing. "I was back at my dorms. The guys had a huge Halo night and we all hung out in the common area. It went on until after 9:30."

"Okay, you see, that's a lie. Your swipe card wasn't used to get into your building until past 9, and the last use before that one was at 5:30 that afternoon. You just lied to a detective. Want to revise that alibi of yours?"

"Nah, you've got a mistake. I was going in, but before I could swipe, someone else was coming out, so they just held the door open for me," he said quickly.

Beckett sighed in frustration, interested about when he was going to start telling the truth. Most idiots who lie to cops once and get caught don't usually try to lie again right afterwards. What the hell wasn't he telling them? She slammed her hands down on the table and hovered over his sitting form, her most frustrated of faces very close to his.

"Now, you know what, that's the second time you've lied to me, and we haven't even been at this for more than two minutes yet," the words gritted out through her teeth and she stared him down intensely. Sitting down next to her was Castle, who whispered over the table to Nick Porter.

"She hates being lied too," he made it sound like friendly advice and not the threat that it was meant to be, but the message came out crystal clear. She saw Nick glance at Castle, then back up at Beckett.

"How do you know that I'm lying about being let in by a friend?" he challenged with a bravado that Beckett had to be impressed by. But any respect that she held for him was drowned out by how much he was beginning to look like a criminal.

"There we go, another denial. Each time you do that Nick I get more and more of a feeling that you've got something to hide. So you can stop pretending because we know that your girlfriend asked you to cover her babysitting charges; Kayla and Aaron. We know you took them home from the park at 6:34 and stayed with them in their apartment until 8:50 pm. We have video of you coming in, and then of you leaving. So please try and deny it again because I can't wait to hear your next excuse,"

Beckett was going harshly, but she didn't care. She just needed one more bit of evidence and she could arrest him on suspicion of murder. He seemed so defensive that she was almost positive that he was the killer. But she didn't have a murder weapon, or a definitive place of death yet, or any semblance of motive whatsoever. She needed something and soon.

"Listen, I'll admit that I lied, but only because Jessie didn't want their parents finding out that she left someone else in charge of their kids. If you already know that, then I'm completely open with you. I did it as a favor to my girlfriend. Nothing was illegal, so I don't know why you're asking me all this,"

He was too calm, and Beckett was disturbed by it. She used her peripherals to take note of Castle's confused face as well. This kid was one giant question mark, and she wanted to get to the bottom of it.

"Because Kayla Evans was found dead in Gramercy Park at 4:30 am the next morning, and you've got the missing piece of her timeline. You also happen to be sitting directly in our killzone, and no one remembers actually seeing Kayla alive after you leave. Are you starting to get the picture?"

"Kayla is… dead?" Finally the stoic shell had been broken, and a mask of shock was apparent on Nick's face, then another flash of realization met his face, and he looked up at Beckett again, who was still standing up, but had backed off slightly by now. "Whoa, you think I killed her, don't you?"

"You could see how it'd look that way, don't you Nick?" Castle chimed in with just as much controlled anger as Beckett had. In the moment she was actually quite proud of him. The writer could easily become a cop.

"Why would I kill Kayla? What would there be to gain? There's no reason," Nick continued, tripping and falling over his defense. Beckett took another step back from the teenager in well-masked confusion. He seemed completely shocked by the accusation of murdering Kayla, when he'd been so sure of what to say before.

"Just tell us what happened while you were there, okay Nick? No more lying this time," Castle filled in while Beckett took her seat. Another wave of pride swept over her; Castle really could be a cop. When she needed a moment to progress all of what the witness was giving away, her undeclared partner had immediately known to take the reins, and where she wanted him to go.

"Okay; we got back to their home, and I made them a quick dinner. I'm not the chef that Jessie is, so it was pretty much whatever crap I could mix up. My roommate comes up with the weirdest study crap too, y'know, stuff that only small children and college kids will eat. The other day he had stuck peanut butter and chocolate sauce in a bowl, and threw popcorn in it, so I made that. They loved it. Then I stuck them in front of the TV until they had to go to bed; Kayla's bedtime was at 8pm, and Aaron's was at 8:15. Then I stayed up and watched a little TV of my own until Jessie came back, and I took off."

"You didn't hear anything by the window, and nothing out of the ordinary happened?" Beckett asked again.

"No, I didn't notice anything,"

"How many times have you done this?" Castle asked out of the blue, and suddenly Beckett stopped being so proud of her supposed partner. He got off track, and now she'd have to start another build-up to her question.

"What?"

"The kids knew you; they were comfortable with you. So how many times had Kayla brought you over to play with them?"

"A few times, maybe four or five times. This was the first time she'd left me alone with them for a large span of time, but we had used divide and conquer policies for getting the kids ready for bed and such, so I had individual experience with them. They liked me,"

"Okay, so what did you watch after you put them to bed?"

"Just some news, y'know there wasn't much on," Nick started getting vague again, and Beckett was surer than ever that he was hiding something. She was pretty sure it wasn't murder, but there was definitely something that he didn't want to talk about.

"Then what about what you watched with them?" Beckett jumped in with the question; already knowing where Castle was going. And it was smart, because her mind was heading there too.

"Why's this important?" Nick asked after a long pause, dodging the question, but not well enough. It was clear he didn't know the answer. Beckett almost grinned, but let Castle finish the attack he started.

"It's not, at least not until you couple it with the fact that you don't know the answer. Then it becomes very important because it begs the question; how does a babysitter who watches a movie with the two kids he's looking after not remember the movie a few days later."

"Okay, so clearly you just lied to us a third time. Now this is where I ought to be saying three strikes; you're out. But I won't, not just yet. By now we have more than enough for a jury to easily believe that you said you were getting ready for bed, and while Aaron sat obliviously in front of the TV you were trying to get her ready. But she just wasn't tired. You kept trying to calm her down but she wouldn't, and so you pushed her, not meaning any harm my it, but she fell and hit something; the sink, the bath tub, the corner of the bed, And then she stopped moving and you panicked, so you put Aaron to bed, and quickly disposed of the evidence and cleaned up the mess, all before your girlfriend got home. Then you said that they were asleep, and not to wake them by going in to check. Then by the time her parents got home, you were long gone," Beckett looked intensely at him while he sat there in shock and surprise at the accusations. "Now you'd better start talking, otherwise you're going to be repeating that sorry story to a jury, and juries are smart. They can tell when you're lying."

"Look, I swear it's not what you think. I didn't kill Kayla!" he insisted nervously. He was starting to squirm, and Beckett knew that she was closing in on him. Once again, she almost let a small grin appear.

"Then what happened, Nick? Tell me,"

•••

"It's not the boyfriend." Ryan concluded definitely, even before Nick opened his mouth again to give the real story to Beckett. Esposito was surprised by his partner's sudden assertion and curious at how he got that conclusion. After all, he was sure that it was Nick. The dude had lied enough times, and had been prepared with a story for almost everything until Beckett called him on it.

"How do you figure that? From my experience, innocent bros don't have alibis on hand when they're dragged into a station," Esposito replied, and turned to Ryan. His partner looked at him too with sunken eyes.

"I never said he was innocent. I said he didn't kill her. There's a difference,"

Esposito sat puzzled for a second, trying to figure out what the hell his partner meant. He took one more glance back into the box at the boyfriend's face, and then thought back to the conversation they'd been overhearing for a while now. Then, it all clicked.

"You think…" he wanted to finish that sentence so Ryan could confirm Esposito's guess, but he never got the chance, because Nick started talking, and he shut up so he could listen. The last thing he let himself notice was his partner's hands going to either side of him to wrap his hand around the side of the table and grip tightly. Esposito realized that Ryan was bracing himself for the confession to come.

•••

"I did sit them down in front of the TV, but I didn't watch it. It was almost 7:00 and in an hour they'd be going to sleep anyhow. Listen, I didn't kill Kayla," he begged Beckett to believe her, and Castle watched wide-eyed. He thought he knew where this was going and he didn't like it. "Every time Jessie brought me over to help me take care of them we always zigzagged between helping the two kids with the nighttime routine. And I always got bath time, without fail. We'd play with her Barbies and I'd wash her hair and her back, and she'd tell me that she loved me, and she'd tell me secrets that she said were just between the two of us,"

He gulped and shuffled around in his chair. Each word out of the slimeball's mouth made Castle more and more furious. It took all of his self control not to leap over the table and strangle the pathetic little worm of a man in front of him. But he knew that they needed him to say it, to confirm it. That's why he forced himself to stay in that chair and fiddle with his hands nervously.

"Children, y'know… they're just perfect in a sense. They're so inquisitive, and trusting, and they love attention. And Kayla… let me tell you, the girl could use some attention. She was this lonely kid when I met her. Very affectionate, eager to be loved, needed the attention. And she took to me right away. It was just so easy, so perfect," the guy stumbled across the words as if trying to justify it to himself.

Castle listened in fury, but one thing caught his attention. He dared not interrupt for fear that Nick would realize what he was admitting to and lawyer up, but he started analyzing every word the kid said, looking for an understanding of Kayla.

"I sat them down by the TV and went into the parent's room just to see what was in there. Then Kayla followed me in saying she didn't want to watch the movie Aaron was watching, and asked me if I wanted to have a tea party with her and all of her stuffed animals. It was just so easy…" he drifted off nervously and looked down at his lap before continuing. "When I went to check on Aaron again he was watching the movie still and it was past his bedtime, so I told him to run through the routine; he was a big kid and could do it himself. I told him Kayla already went to sleep. It was 8:40 by the time he went to sleep and I just sat down and watched some TV. Then Jessie got back and I left. I swear, Kayla was alive when I left. You have do believe me!"

"Do we? You left out a pretty big chunk of time in that story. Here's my guess; you were playing tea party and then you figured you could take what you wanted because she doesn't know any better yet. So you forced yourself on her in her parent's bed. Then you figured that her parents will know what happened and when they ask Jessie, she'll point them to you, and you'd be looking at a pretty big lawsuit, probably an expulsion. So you decided to silence her forever and dumped her body where no one would find it until you were long gone. You raped and murdered Kayla Evans," Beckett drove into him, and he panicked.

"No, I swear I didn't kill her! I couldn't have. Aaron would've seen… And what about that video, I never left before Jessie got back, and doesn't Gramercy have security cameras too?"

"No, they don't Nick. And you could've easily gone out the fire escape. You raped an eight year old girl in her parent's bedroom, what makes you think we would believe that you didn't kill Kayla?" Castle stood up too with barely controlled venom in his voice. He kept thinking of Alexis, his beautiful daughter undergoing what Kayla had been through that night.

Nick stuttered, looking between the both of them nervously as if searching for someone to back him up. When he finally realized there was no way out of this, he spoke again. "I want a lawyer! I'm not going to say anything else without a lawyer!"

Beckett and Castle tried not to sigh in frustration, hoping for a confession. Instead they both gave him one more disgusted glare before walking out of the box and heading to meet the boys.

•••

"What do you think?" Beckett asked the group once they'd reassembled behind the glass.

"I say we arrest the dirtbag now," Montgomery chipped in. "We've got him on the rape, and any jury in the country would put him on the murder too. It's about time we close this case,"

Beckett tried not to squirm. Her gut instinct was telling her that the boyfriend wasn't their guy, no matter how much the evidence seemed to say otherwise.

"I dunno, Sir. There's just something missing. Obviously he was ready for the rape accusation, but when we mentioned murder he was caught completely off guard. I just don't think he's our killer. Besides, we still need a few more pieces of evidence. Such as…"

"Hey Beckett," Karpowski called over to her while hanging up her desk phone. "We've got our murder weapon and our scene of the crime."

Beckett raised an eyebrow in surprise then turned away from the group of guys and met the researcher halfway.

"Turns out she was killed in the parents' room. It had been cleaned, but they found trace amounts of dried blood in between the floorboards. As for murder weapon, the parents have a large potted plant in a porcelain bowl, and there's a fairly large chip around the rim of it. It's been heavily bleached since that day, but we took a sample and Lanie confirmed the shards found in her skull to be a match."

"Good work Karpowski," Beckett said briefly enough before turning around to inform the boys of the new information.

"Think the boyfriend would be able to clean up after himself before Jessie got back?" Castle asked her, probably already coming up with the same answer she had from doing the math in her head.

"It's possible, but he'd be cutting it pretty close. All in all, I doubt it," she replied honestly. "Regardless, I'm going to hold him for child molestation. Regardless, let's start talking to the neighbors. One of them had to have heard something,"

"Ohh!" Castle cooed quietly on the side of her, and everyone turned to look at him curiously.

"What?" she asked.

"There's that out-of-suspects grumpy face. I had almost forgotten about it!" he replied honestly. Beckett blinked a few times in surprise. She had no clue how to respond to that, so she simply stared for a couple of seconds before shaking her head slightly, and turning to face the rest of the boys.

"Anyway, Ryan I need you to start filling in the murder board. Esposito, take over the lawsuit from Ryan, he wasn't getting anywhere the other day. Like I said, Castle and I are going to start knocking on doors. Maybe it'll clue us to a suspect,"

Everyone scattered except for the writer, who followed her closely as she began to head to the elevator. He finally caught up, and glanced at her slightly.

"What's wrong?" he asked with concern in his voice. She hated when he did that, because there was no way to deny how sweet it was.

"It's always harder to do it when motive doesn't seem to apply. No one could actively have a reason to hurt Kayla, so we're pretty much hitting blind. If the neighbors don't have some sort of face, then we're pretty much dead in the water,"

She hated how helpless they were in this case. Motive was one of their greatest assets, and it wasn't easy going without it. The case was one of those few that were so worrying that they needed to be solved quickly. This one should've been solved yesterday, and yet here it still was, tormenting Ryan, hurting the parents, worrying everyone. Castle noticed her frustration, and turned to walk backwards so he could face her.

"Whoa, slow down there. You're going to catch this bastard, and we'll make sure he's put away for a good long time. We've got more information now. We can narrow down the kill zone to any time between 8:50 and 11 pm. We're doing pretty good, okay?"

The elevator bell made the familiar "ding" sound as it closed, and seconds later, they began descending down the floors. She took in Castle's kind words and sighed, a smile cracking through her worn out features.

"Yeah, we're doing good."

* * *

**Let me know if I'm doing good, okay? I love hearing from you.**


	19. Up River Without a Paddle

**Sorry I've been getting slower and slower on updates lately. I've been swamped with work, procrastination, stress, college crap, and to top it off, writer's block. On my computer, this story is done save two-ish final chapters and I'm not sure how I want the end to go. I've got Kayla's murder wrapped up already. Do you have any suggestions because I'm all ears. I have a general idea already, but I'm not sure where I want to go with it. **

**That being said, those chapters are not that far off in the distance. This is nineteen, and I'm trying to write twenty five. I'm nearing the case's finale and want to hear your last guesses as to the murder. Let me know what you think!**

**This one's dedicated to Nana, the most Yiddish woman I ever knew, and to the little old Yiddish lady that I will inevitably become.**

**Chapter Nineteen: Up River without a Paddle**

"Okay, how many do we have left because I don't think I can sit through any more of this," Castle whined to an irritated Beckett who did her best to ignore him. "That last woman, I thought she was trying to rip my cheek off,"

"Yeah well, suck it up Castle. It could be worse," she grumbled in response, not able to think of a better one at the moment. Even she had been getting worn out from the woman they just escaped from.

"Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against tiny Yiddish grandmother figures, but the pinching of the cheeks, the Yiddish phrases, the accents, the constant tangents. It was exhausting!" the writer continued to whine, and while Beckett agreed with him, she'd never let him catch on to that fact.

"Well we've only got one more left, and she probably won't also be tiny and Yiddish," she said as she checked her list. Her name was Ms. Debra Biscoe. She lived just underneath the Evans' apartment, and would be most likely to hear anything from that night, but she also somehow managed to be at the bottom of the list.

"One more?" he asked in a way that made him sound like a tired child at the end of a long Halloween walk. She nodded. "Okay fine, but if she is Yiddish, you're going to be the one in the line of cheek pinching this time!"

She grinned slightly and nodded in concession, her lips pursed together tightly to keep an even bigger smile from taking over her face. One of his cheeks was slightly swollen and very red. How could she not laugh at that sight? When a killer punched him in the face, he took it bravely, even showed off the black eye. But he was helpless as a baby and just as whiny when it came to the small Jewish grandma. With a bit of effort, she pulled her attention away from the pouting mystery writer and turned to knock on the door.

They waited a few moments before a middle-aged woman somewhere in her mid-fifties answered the door with a look of confusion written on her face.

"Ms. Briscoe?" she asked to confirm the woman's identity.

"Yes, who are you?"

The woman wasn't necessarily fat, but she did have this heaviness about her, almost as if she was one of those women who just settled in and let life happen, like she'd stopped trying to take control of it, and simply went with the flow of things. She always hated when people did that.

"My name is Kate Beckett, NYPD. I'd like to ask you a few questions," she flashed her badge and prepared for the surprised look that inevitably followed as the woman stared at her badge for a moment.

"About what?" she asked warily, but Beckett got the sense that she wasn't nervous because of being caught, she had just been caught off-guard. Still, Beckett didn't have the privilege of ruling anything out.

"About three nights ago, we were wondering if you heard anything coming from the apartment upstairs. Any sort of loud noises?"

"What, you didn't hear about it?" she asked suddenly much louder. The volume surprised both Beckett and Castle, who spared one intrigued glance at each other before turning back to the woman to hear the rest of the story.

"Those people are always loud, recently there've been a lot of fights too. Screaming, banging, etc. Well, that night was different. Now the people downstairs probably hate me by now because I'm always sending noise complaints their way. But I mean, really, they should have the courtesy to keep it down over there, right?" the woman started complaining about them much like a woman would complain to her best friend, which is why Beckett was inclined to trust the woman's word.

"What noise did you hear coming from the apartment?"

"Well, the television was blaring, for starters. I mean, out of all the noises I hear from that apartment, a loud TV is rarely one of them. So I was surprised. I also heard this weird thudding from the next room over, and I just figured the parents were doing it. I sent the complaint in and I bet you anything they didn't even file it; they probably just ignored me. So the second time, I didn't even report it."

"The second time?" Beckett asked, alarm bells ringing in her head.

"Yeah, later that night there was these thudding sounds, and a lot of yelling that I really couldn't understand, and this weird crash-type sound. Then later there was a clanking of some sort. By that point I was already so fed up with the lobby that I didn't even report it. I figured, why bother?" The woman talked as if she had no clue how important it was that they were talking about.

"Can you remember what times the noises happened?" Castle chimed in eagerly. After all, this second noise seemed to be the time of murder, and if they could narrow the kill zone down that much, then they'd be in fantastic shape.

"No, sorry. It's been three days. I don't remember things like time. The first time _should _be on file down at the lobby, but I wouldn't put it past them to just not record it. The other… all I remember was that it was some time after 9pm. Sorry I can't be of more help," the woman apologized bluntly, as if she really wasn't all that sorry. But Beckett was grumbling internally. That second disturbance could be Kayla's time death.

"Well, thank you very much. If you remember anything, just give me a call," she said simply, pulling out a business card and handing it to the woman kindly, who took it and ended the conversation as quickly as she could, almost trying to push Beckett and Castle out of the house. Not in a suspicious way, just in a fed up way. Beckett complied and backed up into the hall again, dragging Castle with her.

Without pause she started walking to the stairs again with the pesky writer trailing a little too closely for her liking. She still refused to say anything though, not wanting to show that she had noticed. When she got to the bottom floor, she opened the door without taking care for the wall, or the door. It would be fine. She just focused on the front desk.

"Hello, I'd like to see your records for tenant calls and complaints from the past few days," she got down to business. The man knew her by now and turned to his computer without needing to see her badge. A symphony of tapping keys on a keyboard was the only sound for several moments before the man looked up.

"What would you like to know?" he blanched in a bored tone that Beckett tried to ignore.

"Ms. Debra Briscoe said that she made a complaint down to the desk three nights ago. That would be on Saturday night. We need to know what the exact complaint was, and when it was made,"

More clicking was to be heard and finally the bored man looked up at her again. "The complaint was made at 7:53 and she simply said that there was a lot of noise, nothing else. Do you need anything else?"

"No, thank you," she said as kindly as possible, before turning, and heading out of ear's reach to consult with Castle, who had been uncharacteristically quiet for a while.

"So, what do you think?"

"I think that there's one thing we ought to check first, but then we should get back to the precinct and check in on the guys. There's not much else here. And let me just say that I hope we never have to take another motive-less case; this is infuriating," Castle said, turning the suggestion into a whine.

"Yeah well not every murder leads to a CIA conspiracy, Castle," she said sardonically. He turned to her with an indignant face.

"Hey! One of these days it's going to happen!" he insisted like a child arguing that Santa did too exist. She cracked a small grin.

"Okay, so what do you want to check?"

"The fire escape. We are big fans of that excuse. Even though the crime scene was wiped clean of blood, I doubt that the killer would Windex the fire escape, and juggling a body and a ladder would leave a trace."

The thought process was logical, she had to admit. And since the building just missed the sweep CSU originally did, it was worth looking into. They both headed outside, and she nodded slightly. "Okay Castle,"

She couldn't help but grin moments later at the squeamish novelist climbing the fire escape looking for bloodstains. He seemed to be gripping the rungs with as little skin as possible, and tried to keep his body far away from the ladder.

"Can't we have CSU do this? They'd need to dust for prints, right?"

Beckett laughed. "Dusting this would be like dusting the doorknob to a coffee shop. Too many prints. If we find blood then we can get that down into testing to see if it matches Kayla's blood, but otherwise, we do it ourselves. Got a problem with that Castle?"

"No," he said in unsure tones, dragging out the vowels longer than necessary. Beckett bit her lip to keep from laughing at his childish antics. "It's just, this thing is nasty! I don't even want to know what's making these rungs sticky! Besides, these are nice clothes,"

The whining pushed her over the edge into small chuckles. "You are so metrosexual it's not even funny," she commented as she had done several times in the past. The man was definitely straight, but he had a curious dedication to his hair, his clothes, and what sorts of products he used. It was funny as well as strange.

The grin was wiped from her expression and replaced with her serious work face at Castle's next words.

"Hey Beckett, I think I found something,"

•••

Esposito watched his partner filling all their new information onto the murder board. Of course he couldn't focus on the lawsuit in front of him. From the brief piece he'd read, it was all the basic arguments for a divorce, and he'd read through just about every type of divorce suit in the past. He could just about list what he'd most likely find in that document.

That didn't mean that he wasn't going to get to reading it later; it just meant that he was going to procrastinate reading it now. After all, he was too busy trying to figure out how the man who had broken down in front of him the night before was walking around normally as if nothing had happened.

He had to continue reminding himself that Ryan didn't actually have PTSD, just several of the symptoms of it. He had talked to Holloway, who had debriefed him on his psych analysis, and was relieved to hear that it wasn't as extreme of a case as PTSD, but only something fairly close. Still, the news wasn't that much of a comfort.

How could someone erase one of their sisters from his life, while dedicating it to the other two? How did he manage to stay so strong when he was so young? Why was he only just losing it now? Esposito had so many unanswered questions that he wanted to ask, but was hesitant about asking. It had taken a lot of effort to get the truth out of him. Would it take that much effort to get the rest of the story?

He watched his partner tighten his ungodly grip on the Expo marker as he put in the main details about Kayla's rape. The man's knuckles had turned white, and even though he only had a partial view of his partner, and was mostly looking at the guy's back, Esposito could tell that he was tense. Seeing that, he deserted the law file on his computer and navigated his way through the bullpen until he got to the murder board.

"Hey bro," he said calmly, alerting his partner to his presence, something he had learned that he had to do these past few days. To Ryan's credit, he barely flinched when the two words broke through his concentration. He finished the sentence, and then turned to face Esposito.

"So, have you told Beckett or Castle yet?" Esposito asked casually, needing to know who he could talk to about it.

"You haven't?" Ryan asked back in surprise. Esposito could understand the shock that the entire team didn't know yet. After all, when someone learned something, it was customary for the entire team to know within the half hour. It was practically a team phone tree when it came to gossip and drama.

"Nah bro, this one's yours and yours alone to tell,"

The face Ryan gave him was very neutral, and he couldn't tell if it was because his partner was happy that it wasn't all over the precinct already, or upset because he'd most likely have to tell it again. One thing Esposito did know was that the neutrality wasn't because of indecision, but of strong opposing forces on both sides.

"Yeah," Ryan replied after a long pause. "I guess it is."

An awkward silence settled between them that really hadn't happened since Esposito had first been partnered up with him after his transfer three years ago. What could possibly be said? All those questions he had seconds ago, and none of them came to mind, or seemed appropriate. Finally, it was Ryan who broke the silence.

"So, any ideas for the case?" Typical male avoidance maneuver. And Esposito was a typical guy too, so he played along.

"Nada," he replied in the light Hispanic accent he still carried with him after all these years.

His family had always been very closely knit into his life, and it may have just been his background, but when he was growing up, his entire family would converge once every two weeks for dinner. His Abuelita had made sure that he held onto their culture, by telling him legends and family stories and teaching him Spanish phrases since he was a little boy. Just now, he realized that his partner never had any of that, and the sheer mass of what Ryan had lost sunk in.

His entire partner's family had been limited to his three sisters, his mother, and his father, and by the time he'd hit puberty, that number had already been halved. He had played the parental role, taking care of everyone. The guy barely had a childhood, and never got that sense of safety and trust that families were supposed to share with each other. What that must've done…

He snapped himself away from his thought process, and dragged himself back to the conversation. "What 'bout you?"

There was another pause, but it was shorter this time. "Nope, I got zip,"

For some strange reason, Esposito didn't believe his partner. There was something, no matter how faint it was, in the back of his mind saying that Ryan had a theory he wasn't sharing. Still, the concept was ridiculous, and if his partner had something he considered worth looking into, he would've brought it forward. So he let it drop, and let the conversation fall into silence again.

"You know, you _can _tell them. It'd actually be better," Ryan's sudden shift back to the previous conversation caught him off guard. His partner didn't wait for him to put together what he was saying before he started talking again. "It's… hard to talk about, y'know? I mean, they should know, and I want them to know, but I don't know if I can tell it again. So, it's probably better if you tell them."

"You sure?" Esposito checked to make sure that his partner was okay with it. After all, this was a huge allowance and a huge burden, and he had to be positive.

"Yeah man. Just Beckett and Castle, and maybe Lanie, but yeah. They deserve to know," Ryan kept his eyes on the murder board as he spoke, but Esposito knew better than to believe that his partner was distracted. He nodded solemnly.

The familiar clicking of heels echoed through the precinct and both men looked up to see Castle and Beckett walking back over to them. Esposito stood still, slightly blindsided by the timing of their arrival. Ryan seemed to read his mind.

"Now's as good a time as any," Ryan said, voicing his trepidation quietly, but also determined to get it out of the way. Esposito knew that his partner wasn't just trying to avoid the responsibility, or being lazy when he asked him to tell Castle and Beckett, which is why Esposito didn't mind being the one to tell them. Not that he'd enjoy it at all, but he was willing to do it for his partner.

"Hey Ryan, we found blood on the fire escape and sent it to the lab to test for an identity. If it's Kayla's then we know we won't find our guy on the surveillance camera, and can't rule out any sex offenders or unrelated hits. I need you to get up their asses until they send us back the results," Beckett dictated, completely unaware of the weight of their previous conversation.

"Will do," his partner said, and hurried off to go annoy the white coats over the phone until Beckett got her results.

"Do you have anything for us?" Beckett asked, turning to Esposito.

He sighed. As much as he hated to do it, Ryan was right. Now was the time to talk to them about it. They really couldn't be kept in the dark for much longer. And while he wished that he had been able to talk it out with Lanie beforehand to get a better grip on the reality of the situation first, Beckett and Castle deserved to know. He could talk to Lanie later. First, Beckett and Castle needed to know. They didn't have any hot leads on the murder investigation, and Ryan had pretty much the only job to do at the moment. It was the perfect time, no matter how much he would've liked it not to be.

"Actually yeah, I do, but not about the case" he said slowly and anxiously. He didn't give himself a second's glance to analyze the odd couple's expression before restarting. "Can we get some coffee?"

•••

Ryan was already on hold when he saw his partner lead Castle and Beckett into the break room. A relieved sigh passed through his lungs at his partner's gesture. Esposito had wanted to give him space, so he didn't have to listen to his life story being retold for his colleagues.

He watched as Castle's face morphed from a giddy intrigue into a more solemn face that the writer rarely wore. Beckett who had more of a poker face didn't change expressions too drastically, but it was clear that whatever Esposito was saying was sinking in with her too, because she backed up slightly and wrapped both her hands around the counter, as if to steady herself.

He couldn't watch anymore, and turned his back to the break room just as the pesky elevator music cut off next to his ear and a person's face came on, asking what he needed. Ryan mechanically gave his name and badge number before asking about the blood sample. He was sure that it would take a lot of pestering before he got an answer, but he had time to kill.

He allowed himself one more brief glance at his work friends. He only saw their horrified faces for an instant before turning his back again, but that moment was enough to burn all of their faces into his memory. That was what he had caused, and he resented it.

No, he forcibly corrected himself. That was what his father had caused.

No matter how many times he reminded himself of that though, Ryan still found it difficult to believe.

* * *

**Insert pathetic begging for reviews here.**

** Well... now that that's out of the way I want to thank you for all the reviews I'm getting, and keep them up. As promised, the next chapter title.**

** Chapter Twenty: Staring in the Face**


	20. Staring in the Face

**Hey, I'm back! Sorry it took so long for me to get this next one to you. But it's here now, and you're going to kill me when you see how it ends. Like I promised, Twenty ends with a cliff hanger. And the case will start to wrap itself up from this point onward. Sorry, there's not too much interaction between the characters here, but you'll get much more interaction in the chapters to come. **

**Chapter Twenty: Staring in the Face**

Beckett's mind was racing with what Esposito had told her. Part of her was denying that it happened, that it just wasn't possible. After all, this was _Ryan _they were talking about. He was the affectionate, optimistic one who checked in with his girlfriend every hour and a half, and who never seemed to be seriously angered by anything.

This was the guy who spent the first three weeks of his partnership with Esposito accepting all the snappy insults, harsh brush-offs, and misplaced anger without any resentment. Three years later Beckett had an insight into Esposito's initial resistance to a new partner, but at the time she just thought the new guy was being short-tempered and narcissistic. It was Ryan who told her that it would blow over soon enough, and that he wasn't really phased by it.

There was no possibility that it was true. The Ryan she knew was laid-back, and stable, and untouched by loss. There was no way Esposito had been telling her the truth. And yet, it was true. She was acutely aware of how true it was. And that nauseated her. Even though she dealt with the evils of humanity daily, she felt as though it had broken through her walls and finally started to seep into her life. This was one of her team, and he should've supposedly been broken as a child, by his family nonetheless.

She was brought out of the mental whirlwind of her thoughts by a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Are you okay?" Castle asked her sympathetically. She looked up at him, unsure of what to say. She wanted desperately to tell him that no, she was nowhere close to okay. One of her boys had gone through hell, and she'd never seen it because she was too wrapped up with work, or her mother, or whatever else to notice it. She'd been traipsing about like the wounded avenger while he stayed hidden in the backgrounds, his scars quietly burning, and no one noticing. It was her job to pay attention to those things. And she'd clearly failed.

What she actually said was, "I'm not the one who witnessed my sister's death."

One thing she knew for sure; she had to talk to Ryan.

All three of them tried to casually disband the discussion in the Break room and meander back to their desks in the bullpen as normally as possible. Castle had seemed to understand that she needed to talk to Ryan, not just as his team leader, but on a personal level too, so he followed Esposito silently to his desk.

Beckett didn't know what she was going to say; she couldn't possibly understand the kind of pain that he had gone through, and didn't know what would be appropriate, how much he'd want to talk about it, or even how much she'd want to talk about it. She usually wasn't very vocal with her emotions, and she doubted that this would be any exception to the rule.

The one good side about talking to Ryan about this, was that he'd understand what she was trying to say.

"Hey, how're the white coats?" she asked casually.

"Despising me more and more by the minute!" Ryan said with a grin on his face, almost as he had forgotten what she'd just been told. "So we should get results back in under an hour. If we're lucky, she put up some kind of fight, and we'll get hers and our killer's blood."

One thing that scared her more than most of it is the concept that he was able to just put away all of his pain and fear and hurt away in an instant and suddenly start joking and grinning like nothing was wrong. Either he was doing a better job of putting on a smile than most people could ever do, or his mind had actually been conditioned to turn off certain emotions whenever he wanted or needed to. While it was a trick perfect for their job that she was jealous of, it also freaked her out to think of what could possibly be so horrible that the brain was forced to adapt that way.

"Yeah, that'd be fantastic," she agreed half-heartedly. She couldn't wait to solve this one, but at the same time that wasn't the tragedy she was focused on at the moment. "Hey Ryan, can I talk to you for a second?"

His face immediately turned solemn, and he clearly knew what this was about. After all, he was far from stupid. He just nodded and followed her back into the break room, sitting down tensely on the coffee table. Beckett wanted to look at him face to face, not as his boss, so she slowly picked up the remote and turned off the overhead television before she too sat down on the arm of the couch.

How to begin was the question. Beckett didn't have a clue, so for a moment, they just sat there in silence, Ryan waiting for her to begin speaking, and her waiting for an inspiration to strike her.

"You know, after my Mom was killed, my Dad took it hard. So did I, but not in the same way," she surprised herself by bringing up her Mother, and considered stopping herself right there, but the words felt right, so she let herself continue slowly. "When I was young and got upset about something she would always come and tell me not to give up, because life never throws anything at us that we can't handle. For years after her death, my Dad didn't believe her… and in some ways, neither did I, because losing her was unbearable. But she was right, and I know it. Dad calls it 'Johanna's Immutable Law of the Universe,' and I still live by that."

Ryan had appeared surprised for a moment. Beckett wasn't the "sharer," and he'd said it himself once or twice. Also, he was probably expecting her to start asking him all these questions. After all, that's what everyone's been doing almost non-stop for days. But she knew that he didn't need that now. She had heard about Ryan's incredible strength during his worst years, and she knew he could handle it; she just needed to make sure that he knew it.

"I've come up against it over and over, and she was still right," Beckett concluded meaningfully. "Life never does give us anything we can't handle."

Ryan kept looking at her thoughtfully for another moment in silence, and she didn't know exactly what do make of it for a moment. She couldn't tell what he was thinking; his face was so neutral. Finally, he gave her a weary little half grin that showed he understood what she was trying to say, and responded.

"I know,"

•••

Esposito tried to read the lawsuit, he really did, but with Castle's deep-in-thought expression in the chair next to his desk, he found it impossible to concentrate. No wonder Beckett got so frustrated with him. Then again, the writer was entitled to a little shock. After all, he'd spent hours last night trying to get over the shock of Ryan's story. Finally, Esposito's worry got the better of him. Castle was never that silent for that long.

"Hey bro, you alright?"

"Yeah, fine," he rasped out in an instinctive response. His mouth had been hanging slightly open for a long time, but it was only then that both men realized how dry it was. Castle shut his mouth and swallowed deeply, rubbing his throat in the process.

"Took me a while too," he said to the writer, acknowledging his own shock. At the words, Castle seemed to reanimate, and return to his normal demeanor. The serious deep-in-thought face was still there, but at least he seemed to have a better grasp on the knowledge.

"One thing I don't get is the trigger. Where'd it come from?"

"Little girl beaten and killed, then dumped? What do you expect?" Esposito stated bluntly, surprised that the usually intuitive writer didn't make that connection. But he turned to face Castle, because he had learned by now that when Castle seemed to not understand something, it usually meant that he was on the verge of a breakthrough.

"Okay, so why didn't the crime scene trigger his trigger then? You said it was first sparked in the bullpen,"

The writer was right. It had been triggered at the precinct. It had been hours after they left the crime scene when Ryan had first freaked out on them. He reached back into his head to try and remember when exactly it had been triggered.

"Yeah," Esposito said finally. "It was after Beckett broke the news to the parents. We sat in, then we shook hands with them, then Ryan got weird and ran off."

He wanted to discuss their breakthrough with Castle further, but Ryan and Beckett's short conversation ended then and the team leader strode over to them at that moment. Esposito knew what came next. This was the point in the investigation where Beckett spent hours staring at the murder board until either she or Castle found out exactly what they were missing in the entire case that made everything fit together.

Occasionally Esposito and Ryan joined them, but more often than not they stayed at their computer screens to check and double check everything they thought they knew. After all, staring at the murder board for hours is Castle and Beckett's special bonding thing. The partners had a strange relationship; they were essentially dating except that neither recognized it and they weren't sleeping together. Their equivalent of dates was murder scenes, interviews with witnesses, and road trips. Their staring at the board until a breakthrough comes is their substitute for sex. Ryan and Esposito knew enough not to interrupt that.

This time though, it was going to be a difficult mystery to crack because they were virtually out of suspects, devoid of motive, and at a loss for any explanation that would make sense. Some of their greatest weapons to wield were out of the running.

They were in for a fun night.

•••

Beckett and Castle leaned on the corner of some empty desk, staring at the murder board. They did this often, and were used to staying there like that for hours on end, but this time, neither of them could find anything. It was infuriating.

Beckett ran through every bit of information, but couldn't find the little bit of time they'd missed that it would've taken the killer to swoop in, kill her, dump her, then clean up. Everything was full up; like it should be, there was someone watching Kayla at all times. There's a possibility that it was the babysitter, but no reason to think that.

"Do you have any clue whodunnit?" she asked wearily to the man sitting in a similarly slumped position less than a foot away from her.

"I'm going to go with the Wicked Stepmother; that's the only person who ever wants little girls dead," he said in a half monotone voice. She couldn't help but smirk a little before refocusing on the murder board.

"This case is impossible!" she grumbled out in obvious frustration. "There has to be something we missed!"

"Well, most of my questions had been answered nicely and neatly. This fits together so well, it's like there wasn't even a murder at all." Castle grumbled right back.

"Hey, I need a break. Mind if I head down to the gym for a half hour?" Ryan had suddenly appeared next to Beckett, and she tried not to act surprised by his unannounced emergence. She should expect that to happen, after all, she got lost in the murder board that everything else seemed to fall away.

"What, you don't want to join the long line of cops who stare at whiteboards?" Castle asked in mock indignance before breaking out of character and returning to a semi-normal face. Well, as normal as Castle's face could get, Beckett thought in an internal attempt at humor.

"Sure, go right ahead, but if I need you to look something up, get ready to get back up here," she allowed with a hint of a warning for normalcy. There really was nothing left to do besides wait for the lab to get their blood sample back, and stare at the murder board. Besides, Ryan had been through a lot in the past couple of days. He deserved thirty minutes off.

"Thanks," With that one word, Ryan walked off and vanished from being. Because after a certain number of feet, when she was staring at that whiteboard, nothing else in the universe existed. Castle was only safe from being obliterated from existence because he was sitting so close to her that she could move an inch and bump into him.

"Tell me we have something," the Captain's voice brought her back to the real world and she turned to address her boss.

"Unless you count sore eyes and dried out markers, nope. We've got nothing," Castle said for her, and her frustration just increased at the truth in his words.

"The mayor's not going to like this," Montgomery sighed in disappointment before glancing back at the picture of Kayla's body when they found her. "Nobody likes when a little girl's killer walks; she deserves some closure."

"Well, we're still looking into it, and we're not about to write it off as unsolved yet," Beckett said determinedly.

In that moment, she realized how Montgomery knew next to nothing about Ryan's past, and trauma. None of them had really given him anything more than the general 'he's not feeling well.' Even though they usually kept him updated on the more personal cases, this one, she just felt, should be kept quiet from their boss. Ryan could easily be taken off the case if Montgomery knew, and that was the last thing that he needed. Ryan never got closure for his own trauma, and he was trying to reap some sort of closure from Kayla's.

"Well, keep me updated on any big, new developments,"

"Will do, Sir," she said, inwardly thinking about how limited that promise was. Even though it wasn't true, Kayla's murder and Ryan's past seemed to be blurring together into this mess of confusion. This was probably why detectives got one case at a time; so they didn't mix them up. Of course, this time it was unavoidable.

She sighed and turned back to the murder board and started to look again for what she was missing. On cue, the bullpen began to vanish from around her.

•••

Esposito could've banged his head against the desk. After cases he would usually call up Lanie, or meet up with her for a beer to fill her in on how the case had played out. He knew that it gave her closure, but it also helped him. He compartmentalized during the job, and boiled everything down to simple logic and truth, but outside the job, he was less cut-and-dry. Outside the job, he just needed to make sense of it all sometimes.

He hadn't finished the case yet, and coupled with Ryan's barely leashed trauma his brain was fried. But he knew that no matter how worn down he was, his partner probably felt worse.

The best way to put this all to rest, and hope to get things somewhat back to normal would be to solve Kayla's case. He knew that it couldn't change the past, or fix the present, but at least it was a more sturdy ground to stand on than where they were now.

He'd spent hours at that damn desk, reading through each session's long list of notes, changes, progress, etc, etc. For some reason, the woman had demanded that her divorce notes take up three times as much paper as it should have to, and Esposito was seriously starting to get pissed at Mrs. Dawson. So far, nothing was much different than from what he was expecting, except as the weeks of daily meetings continued on, Mrs. Dawson started becoming more and more comfortable about asking questions about what she could get from the divorce, and what information she divulged.

He wished that he had the time to give more thought to his partner's obvious torment through this case. Everything was killing Ryan, probably because he probably saw it as closing Ashleigh's case, but still…

He assumed that it was probably going around like the plague these past couple of days, but he got the feeling that there was something huge that he was missing, and he resented it. During that talk he had with Ryan the other day, he had made it perfectly clear how much he hated not knowing.

If he could rant about it, then maybe he'd be able to figure out what was missing. Or maybe if he had the time to just zone out, the idea would come to him. Or maybe if he wrote it out? Nah, it was hopeless; he had no clue of what he'd write out after all. There was just something there that he felt like he was just missing. Sighing at how completely worthless he felt, he cracked his back once to relieve some tension from his shoulders, then turned back to the computer screen in front of him. Then, there's when it hit him.

Two and a half weeks into the three weeks' worth of meetings, three words jumped out at him that told him exactly what they hadn't seen. Suddenly, everything made sense in his mind. Everything.

He stood up suddenly and made his way over to Beckett and Castle staring at the murder board. Usually he didn't disturb them during their ritual glare-downs with the murder board, especially because of all the subtext laced underneath the simple ritual, but this time it was crucial.

"Where's Ryan?" he asked urgently, snapping Beckett out of her trance and into a state of surprised confusion. He didn't have the time to wait until Beckett reoriented herself with the world outside of Castle and the board. He needed the answer now.

"Huh?"

"Where's Ryan?"

"He said he was headed to the gym for a thirty minute break," she answered in bewilderment. He had been focused on the lawyer's notes at the time and didn't even know when he'd slipped out, and of course, the rest of the team had been focused on their own task.

"How long ago was that?" He was impatient while Beckett took the time to glance down at her watch.

"Almost an hour and a half ago!" she said in shock, standing up quickly. "Do you think that he's relapsed in another panic attack?"

"I dunno, but I need to find him now," Esposito pressed, but when Beckett stood up, he hesitated slightly. "It might be better if I go, just me. Y'know, don't want to overwhelm him,"

Beckett stopped and looked at him hard for a moment before backing down and nodding. "Yeah, you're probably right. Just make sure he's okay,"

"Will do," he said, as he rushed in the direction of the precinct gym.

He tried to hurry while still keeping some sense of cool, but the moment he hit the stairs (the elevator was old, slow, and too unpredictable) he didn't even bother to care anymore. The moment the door to the staircase closed he broke into a sprint, taking the steps three at a time. He didn't even mind about the five flights of stairs down to the basement floor with the small gym that, for the most part, went surprisingly unused.

When he crashed through the door at the bottom of the stairs, he thankfully found Ryan still there. His partner was clearly upset, but not severely so, not where it looked like he could pass out at any moment. He had changed into sweatpants and a plain t-shirt and was at the bag, sweating but not too badly. This looked like one of the more normal brands of frustration for his job, and for that Esposito was glad. Of course, he didn't let his relief show; he was dealing with something much more important at the moment. Over the past couple of days he had learned how defensive Ryan got when he demanded answers. And naturally, he was about to do it again.

"You know!" he shot out loudly; sounding more ragged and out of breath than he had expected himself to sound. Ryan looked at him in a slightly amused, very confused manner.

"What?" he asked lightly, humor lacing his words. He was unsure as to what Esposito was getting at.

"You know who killed Kayla,"

Ryan's smile dropped immediately.

* * *

**Well, do you hate me? I thought so. Anyway, review to let me know what you think. **

** And, like always, the next chapter title.**

** Chapter Twenty One: Breakthrough from Breakdown**


	21. Breakthrough from Breakdown

**Hey guys. Sorry my updates have been so slow in coming lately. I'm struggling to finish the common application and there's been a lot of stuffs going on over here, but don't worry! I haven't forgotten about you! Besides, it'd just be cruel for me to drop the story at chapter twenty after all this time. So thanks for sticking with me through this and here's the long awaited chapter twenty one.**

**The murderer won't directly be named in this, and it is kinda short, but you'll more or less be able to guess the murderer after this, and I won't hold out nearly so long with chapter twenty two. Promise.**

**Chapter Twenty One: Breakthrough from Breakdown**

"What're you talking about? That's crazy!" Ryan responded with surprise, but even he must've heard the denial in his voice.

"Really Ry? You're actually trying to lie to your partner?" Esposito shot back with a hint of anger in his voice. He had thought that they were past this, and Ryan felt guilty for holding back his thoughts from his partner immediately.

"It's the truth!" Ryan insisted, but the denial had vanished, and was replaced with a resentment that wasn't directed at Esposito as it was directed at himself. "I don't _know _who killed Kayla." And he had to keep reminding himself of that. There was nothing to suggest that he was anywhere close to right.

"But you had a hunch," His partner followed up immediately. He just looked down at the floor in his guilt, not even bothering to deny it. "You've had a hunch since the beginning, and you've gotten more and more certain as we went through. And you never said anything! You could've mentioned it to us; Castle's had us follow stranger leads before."

"I had no evidence," Ryan said in an attempt to defend himself. "It was just a dumb, biased hunch that had no evidence to back it up. All it would've done was stir up the questions of where I got that from, and how I would be able to recognize it. If I had found any evidence, then I would've told you,"

Esposito looked at him with some strange expression that he couldn't quite interpret. He ran through his defense again for anything strange in it, but he thought it all made sense. He didn't know what could cause that reaction in his partner.

"What was your first clue?" Esposito asked quietly, and Ryan looked down at the ground. He had to be honest with him. After all, he'd put them through too much lately.

He slowly turned and walked off the mat to where there was a bench in the corner. He knew that he'd probably need to sit down at some point, so he took care of it sooner rather than later. Esposito must've understood what he was doing, because he followed him nearby to a workout bike, and sat sideways in the seat and faced him, waiting for the story. Ryan took a steadying breath and obliged.

"The meet-and-greet," he expected Esposito's look, and just continued. "Remember when we shook hands? There were bruises on her wrists. It's not easy to get bruises on your wrists in a normal manner. If you fall or swing it into a door your palms or forearms get beat up. Next to nothing would get the wrists. Nine times out of ten, it's the dead giveaway."

"You knew even then, and you didn't say anything?" Esposito asked quickly. He had probably made the connection to his first trigger, but didn't expect Ryan to already have a prime suspect. Who would? Any intelligent, intuitive, sane cop would bring a prime suspect forth to his team. That's the way it works, and Ryan was no exception. Of course Esposito wouldn't expect him to change his behavior.

"I said nine times out of ten for a reason. It's not exactly smart to take a shot in the dark, especially one like that." It was too huge of an accusation. Reputations can be destroyed by that kind of claim. Even if it's proven wrong, people don't bounce back from that. They couldn't bluff with that one to a witness. They needed to be sure before they said anything, and he wasn't.

Esposito had to understand that one, but knew that there was more to be said. "That wasn't your only hint though, was it?"

"There was the way she timidly asserted her maiden name, and the stuttering. But also all the fights the parents got into, how lightly the kids slept, and the divorce pushed the issue, but none of it offered any definitive reason to believe that…" he trailed off sadly. He didn't want to say it out loud.

"How lightly the kids slept?"

"Jenny has never once been able to get up to get a drink of water at night without me waking up. It's just how the body conditions itself for self-preservation; you've got to be on the alert at all times for whatever might happen. That means letting every bump in the night wake you up,"

"So, let's nail the bastard already," Esposito said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Ryan sighed and shook his head.

"There's nothing that could hold up in a court of law, so why bring it to Beckett if a hunch can't hold its water?" He asked rhetorically, and sighed.

"Because it's something worth looking into!" the Hispanic was shouting now, infuriated at the defeated look on his partner's face.

Normally Esposito didn't work off of hunches, so it was weird to hear it coming from him. Normally he wanted the facts and looked for some definitive proof before he brought it forward. Usually Ryan was the one who relied on hunches and minor discrepancies that most cops write off as weird. While he trusted his gut, Esposito never followed emotional responses unless there was some hard substance.

Ryan thought about it, then paused in a confused realization. "Wait, how did you know that I thought…?"

Esposito gave him a slight smile. "I just figured it out when I got your evidence."

•••

"Yo Beckett!" the call across the precinct jolted Castle out his concentration at staring at the murder board. Immediately, he checked his watch and grinned before turning to Beckett excitedly.

"Three hours and thirty six minutes. We made top five," he cheered quietly, and swelled in pride when Beckett grinned slightly. Normally when he mentioned the list of longest stare-downs with the white board, she scolded him and reminded him that actual police work is less glamorous than TV shows portray. There wasn't intense background music while the camera showed a montage of them moving around evidence and staring at the board. It was real life. He was glad she was starting to relax around him again.

"Did you find anything?" she called back to the boys, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice.

He was surprised at how late it had already gotten, and realized that he was just as desperate as they were to close the case. He wanted to see how it all played out, but the day after tomorrow he had to leave to pick up Alexis. He couldn't wait to see his daughter again, but he still didn't know if he could stand not watching this one end. This was a closure case; everyone needed it to be solved, and they all needed to have some part in closing it. If they didn't close the case tomorrow, then he'd either have to postpone his and Alexis's Hampton trip, or drop the case.

"You bet! We think we know who the killer is," Ryan said, walking up next to his partner. The first feeling from Castle was the relief that the Irish man was very conscious, and seemingly stable. They hadn't let him run off two hours ago to work himself up into some trauma frenzy. After a moment, he absorbed the words and lit up in excitement and surprise. Very rarely did Esposito and Ryan make the breakthrough fact, but this case had them all stumped, and somehow they came up with the epiphany.

"Who?" Beckett demanded in the same excitement, surprise, and confusion. Instead, Esposito handed her a packet of what looked like the lawyer's notes in a folder with a couple of lines highlighted. She read it, and closed the manila folder before Castle could lean over and read what it said. She grinned in a bittersweet way of finding the killer, but not liking what she saw. "I'll have uniforms pick him up in the morning."

Beckett nodded to the guys before walking off with the folder to show Montgomery. He considered following her to ask what it said, but thought otherwise and turned to the boys.

"What'd it say? Who are we picking up?" he realized he was on the verge of begging for answers, but he was beyond caring. Esposito grinned widely, and looked to his partner who wore a similar smile, only slightly diminished. "C'mon guys! What did it say!"

"Three words, Castle," Ryan finally caved. His face seemed much lighter than it had since he'd been back, but still burdened by what they had found. Still, the relief in his expression made it suddenly obvious to the writer that Ryan had guessed at this guy long before tonight and had, for whatever reason, stopped himself from moving forward with his instinct. "Deny visitation rights,"

"Lawyer seemed to think that it could hold." Esposito commented lightly. At that hint, both men turned around, and headed for their desks, where they got on their computers immediately to start building a case against their perp.

Castle was left standing alone near the murder board, and thought about what Ryan said for a second. He had just been staring at the whiteboard for several hours on end, and his mind was a little slow. He rubbed at his eyes roughly and allowed himself the time to let his brain reboot and begin to make the connections. The four note tune of the windows logo on every computer screen waking up was practically playing in his mind as he ran over the words again. Instantaneously his eyes widened in realization.

"No!" he gasped in disbelief before biting his knuckles to keep from yelling out his shock.

* * *

**So, now you know what those three words were. What do you think? Let me know if I did this well, and if you've figured it out, and what you hope to see in the next chapter, which I promise will be longer.**

** And as promised. The next chapter title**

** Chapter Twenty Two: Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt**


	22. Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt

**Wow, I am so sorry you guys! I know you've all been asking me to put up the next chapter but I've been Writer's Blocked, and have two huge research papers, and a bunch of December 1st deadlines for college applications. I've had, quite literally, no time to update. **

**Now, here's the deal. I'm still writer's blocked on chapter twenty five, and until I have the time to start writing again (anywhere between a week and two weeks I hope.) But hopefully I'll be updating again really soon. For now, here's the adorable chapter I've been promising in which Ryan gets the hug you have all been waiting for.**

**Chapter Twenty Two: Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt**

Ryan was in no place to go through with the interrogation, even if it was technically his find. He would lose it, he would step over the line, and then the killer would walk because Ryan let his past interfere with his work now. Everyone knew it as well as he did, so without any words being said, when the arrest is made, Beckett would be the one interrogating him.

That's why he sat anxiously, waiting for her and Castle to return with their suspect.

"We'll nail 'em, y'know," his partner said to him in what was meant to be a comforting tone.

"We don't know that we've got the right killer, just another suspect. It's possible I was wrong, or that it had nothing to do with Kayla's murder," he replied, trying not to get his hopes up.

"What's the likelihood that the two aren't connected?" Esposito was trying to reason out reassurances, but it didn't do much good.

"The rape wasn't connected to the murder," the pessimism, fear, and self-doubt crept into his voice strongly. All of the uncertainty that had stopped him from mentioning it before swarmed back at full strength.

"Suppose not. But this one's good. There are real leads. We found good evidence,"

"Not enough to close the case,"

"We'll get it Kev," At the sound of his first name, Ryan turned around to face his partner. That determined, no-nonsense look was on the man's face. "Promise."

•••

Castle knew the routine of arresting the guy, but it wasn't often when they made the arrest at home in the presence of children. He wasn't sure if Beckett had thought this through. They needed to take both parents in for questioning, and he wasn't sure what would happen to young Aaron. Putting him in Jessie's care wouldn't be the smartest thing to do right now, and he couldn't join his parents in the interrogation room.

Before he could voice his concerns Beckett was already knocking on the door. It was early, and when Luke Evans answered the door with his suit and briefcase it looked like he was almost ready to head to work.

Castle took a moment to look around the father and peer into the rest of the apartment. His wife, Natalie Dawson was helping Aaron with his breakfast, but she looked almost ready to head out the door as well. Aaron just kind of sat there staring at his breakfast without saying a word.

"Detective, what can I do you for today?" the father asked in rushed tones, clearly trying to hurry out the door. The mother saw what was happening and abandoned the dishes in the sink to join in the conversation.

"I need you and your wife to come down to the Station with me," she said bluntly.

"What? Why!" he shot back at her loudly, and in anger. Castle could've grinned at the defensive slip. Very few innocent people got defensive at such a vague questioning.

"You're under arrest for suspicion of murder. Now we can do this here in front of your son, or you can come with me,"

Both parents seemed to be in shock. Mr. Evans dropped his briefcase on the ground carefully and stared at Beckett as if waiting for her to break out into a grin and inform him that she was just kidding. Mrs. Dawson stayed very quiet and kept her eyes to the ground. She shifted her weight back and forth uncomfortably, as if nervous to look at Beckett at all.

"S-s-s-s-sure," Mrs. Dawson stuttered out finally. The time it took her to get that one word out was worse than before, and Castle couldn't help but feel bad for her.

Beckett began to lead them out, then turned to Castle. "I need you to walk Aaron to the Precinct,"

"Walk?" he asked in surprise. Clearly Beckett had planned what to do with the little boy, but wanted him to do the legwork. "Why do we have to walk? Can't we just take a cab?"

"No, we'll be able to watch him at the precinct, but I'm hoping by the time you get there, the interrogation will be over and he won't have to watch one of his parents being arrested for murdering his little sister."

With that, Beckett took off, and the quiet little boy looked up to stare at him. The penetrating eyes of the eleven year old made him uncomfortable for a moment before his fatherly instincts kicked in. The boy had just lost his sister, and was most likely about to lose another family member; what he needed right now was some comfort and normalcy. At least, as much normalcy as one could get from a stranger suddenly taking you to go see your parents at the precinct.

"Hi," he started awkwardly, bending down to meet his height. "My name's Rick. What's yours?"

"Aaron," the boy replied nervously after a long pause. It almost looked to Castle as if the kid wasn't sure if he should trust him.

"Nice to meet you Aaron. Do you mind taking a walk with me? I need to go meet my friends at the police station, and they'd really like to meet you,"

"Am I being arrested?" Aaron asked nervously, with sadness lacing his voice. Castle was intrigued at the introverted boy's assumption, and figured that it was worth a bit more prying.

"Why would you get arrested?" he asked the child with humor lacing his voice. He wanted to help Aaron relax, but he just couldn't seem to do it. The boy was too nervous and too upset about something. A horrifying thought flashed through his mind, and Castle hoped to God it wasn't true, but it was very possible that Aaron witnessed his little sister's rape or murder.

"Because of the camera,"

At this, Castle cocked his head in confusion. It sounded important, but Castle couldn't believe that the killer would be dumb enough to take pictures or video of them murdering Kayla. Especially not if they were right and the father was the killer. It would remind the family of something they clearly didn't want to be reminded about, it would leave evidence in an area the police were bound to check, and Aaron could stumble across it.

"What camera?"

"The video camera I found in Mommy and Daddy's room a few days ago. It was hidden in a pile of folded clothes on the dresser. Was that stealing? Mommy said stealing was wrong,"

Castle's mind raced. It was unlikely at best, but maybe if they were lucky it was recording when Kayla was killed. That would be considered irrefutable evidence in any court of law, and enough to put the killer away for a long time.

"Aaron, can you show me the camera? I'd really like to see it,"

The boy nodded solemnly and stood up to head into his room. A couple of seconds later he returned with a small digital video camera and handed it to Castle. For a moment, the author was so wrapped up in the boy's face that he completely ignored what could be evidence in his hand. The boy had huge eyes and looked scared, as well as sad and thoughtful. His dark hair and hazel eyes gave him a very fuzzy mental image of what Ryan would've looked like at that age, before or after Ashleigh's death. The expression was probably similar too.

Finally, he pulled his gaze away from the nervous child and towards the video camera in his hand. It only took a moment of analysis for him to get a general overview of how to work it, and he pressed the green button that had to turn it on. After adjusting the settings to the playback folder, he looked to see just one video in the queue. It was 165 minutes long, so it clearly had been running for a long time.

Castle was a little afraid to press the play button. He didn't know what he would see. It might be nothing; like a school play or a dance recital. But more likely than anything it was something horrible that had happened to Kayla several days ago. He wasn't sure if he could handle watching it. But he thought of Aaron, and Kayla, and even of Ryan who had to live through it much too early in life. They were strong children, so for their sakes he should be able to watch it.

He pressed the button, then immediately pressed mute for Aaron's sake. The scene began to play out on the tiny screen. There was Nick setting up the camera in the pile of clothes, and just like he said Kayla was smiling and sitting in a circle with a couple of worn out stuffed animals, pretending to have a tea party.

Castle didn't need to watch the full 165 minutes. He pressed the fast forward button, and watched in horror as Nick proceeded to rape the tiny girl in super-speed. Then he seemed to forget about the camera, and just left it recording. For over two hours worth of film he just watched Kayla lying in tears on the blood-stained bed. She hadn't moved since that monster had climbed off of her. Animals were strewn all over the place, except for one small black dog that she held clasped in one hand.

As a father, he couldn't stand to watch. All he could imagine was Kayla's poor broken body turning into an eight year old Alexis, and the stuffed dog she grabbed onto being Monkey Bunky, and her crying in trauma while lying in her own blood. While the cop side of him hoped the video continued until her murder, the human part of him just wanted it to be over. Still, he steadfastly stared at the screen.

Then the scene changed, and Castle tore his eyes away.

"Come on Aaron, we need to go get a cab right now so we can show this to my friends," the urgency was probably present in his voice and his trying to usher the child out the door was taken with an unexpected reaction. Instead of letting himself be led to the door, Aaron jumped away from his slow moving hand in fear, as if he thought the novelist was about to shove him to the ground.

"Will they yell at me for taking it?" his small voice trembled in fear, and Castle's heart broke all the more.

"No, of course not! They'll thank you for finding this and showing it to me."

The little boy's mouth timidly curved into the slightest of smiles and he ducked his head down humbly out of pleasure at the unexpected praise. Almost as if he was trying to hide the fact that he was smiling. Castle took a moment to ruffle his hair affectionately, and was even more saddened when the boy originally flinched at the contact before registering that this was just another act of kindness. Then he quickly ushered the boy out of the apartment and lead him to the elevator, already determined to find a cab. No matter what Beckett said, this was too important to wait.

•••

"Now will you tell me why I'm being accused of murdering my baby daughter?" Luke Evans shouted at Beckett, who stared back coldly. She had no more sympathy for the man sitting in front of her. All she needed was a confession from one of the two of them, and she could process charges and put this horrible case behind her.

"Someone cleaned up the crime scene, which just so happened to be in your apartment. In your bedroom to be precise. No one else had time to wash the blankets and scrub the floors. We have your downstairs neighbor willing to testify that she heard yelling and crashing around the time when you got back home. Shall I continue?"

Mrs. Dawson sat next to him, looking down nervously at her lap, trying to avoid eye contact while her husband was trying to stare Beckett down. She was disgusted, because she knew exactly how this interrogation was going to go, and it wasn't fair because Ryan had to watch it too.

"Someone could've slipped into my bedroom while Jessie was babysitting and killed her then! I am not a murderer, and I can't believe I have to stand here and justify myself to you right now!"

"You figured that people would attribute it to gang violence, or deranged sex offenders, so you dropped her off in Gramercy Park. Very smart using the fire escape so we wouldn't see you leaving the hotel with her body," Beckett said coolly, while she watched him get more riled up.

"You have no proof! Anyone in the city could've killed her with that evidence!"

"That's not all. Did you know your wife was meeting with her lawyer for the past couple of weeks?" At that, Beckett watched him turn incredulously to Natalie, who had sunk so low into her chair that she wouldn't be surprised if the floor did try to eat her. "She was trying to file for divorce. But get this, she wanted to deny you any and all visitation rights to see your children. Her lawyer seemed to think that she could win too. Now, you're not an alcoholic, and you have a job, so why could she do that?"

"You're lying," he accused Beckett frantically, turning to Mrs. Dawson and grabbing her upper arm tightly in his hands and shaking her lightly as if to force an answer out of the frail woman. "TELL ME SHE'S LYING!"

At the grab and the shout, Beckett rested her hand near her gun and cuffs, ready to attack if he got much more violent. At the moment, the grasp was gentle enough to not be considered abuse, but it was sitting on the threshold, and the moment it crossed over, she wanted to be ready to jump into action.

"I'm not lying," she continued stone-faced and calmly. "We also looked into your family's hospital records. About a month and a half ago your wife went in for a broken rib, and three weeks after that she went again for a check up on her healing. That's about a week before she started going to visit her lawyer. Now are you going to tell me that the two _aren't _related?"

More denials flung from the monster's mouth and at Beckett, none of which she bothered with. None of it held any ground. Beckett was sick of having to even sit in the same room with Luke Evans. The feeling of utter hatred was only comparable to having to talk and negotiate with her mother's killer. Even though she knew it wasn't true, she couldn't help but fall victim to the team's association. It felt as if when she talked with Kayla's father that she was also talking to Ryan's father.

"Well, it said she broke her rib when she fell going downstairs, but as far as my best ME is concerned from reading the hospital notes, there's no possible way that tripping on the stairs could cause those injuries. And her lawyer seems pretty damn convinced that your wife could win the court case. Juries are smart; they'll see what was going on, and they'll call you on it,"

"Why would I murder my daughter?" he repeated insistently, and a hint of worry crept into Beckett's mind. "You have no motive, and all of this is circumstantial evidence. None of it proves anything," Suddenly, he heard the words come out of his own mouth and all the emotion drained from his face, replaced with the faintest of smirks, "I'd like to call my lawyer, now,"

Beckett sighed, before standing up and walking out of the box, just barely masking her frustration.

She swore under her breath once the door was safely closed behind her. Two seconds later she was joined by Ryan, Esposito, and Montgomery.

"That son of a bitch is lawyering up," Esposito declared to the group as if none of them knew it already. The hispanic's eyes were burning in fury. In contrast, Ryan looked shaken and scared, as if Mr. Evans was about to burst through the wall and start beating him up.

"The guy's got a point too. We don't have any solid evidence, and I think that we won't find it. He could walk very easily," Ryan contributed quietly, voicing the fears of everyone in the circle.

"We won't let that happen," she promised Ryan immediately, trying not to show how concerned she was over their lack of substantiation too.

"Keep looking for that proof; I want this bastard put away," Montgomery ordered in an attempt to motivate the team. Instead they all nodded wearyingly. They were tired, lacking leads, and without evidence. It was starting to look more and more like the case wouldn't be definitively closed. If she did arrest Mr. Evans now, there was a good chance the jury would find reasonable doubt, then he'd walk.

Beckett silently took her place in front of the murder board and started staring emptily at the evidence, combing through all the information over and over. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ryan walking over to the break room and immediately began making himself a coffee. With a hint of worry, she tilted to the side slightly so she had a better view of him, but not enough to tip him off that she was watching.

The man was pacing quickly, and kept running his hand through his hair nervously. She sighed in a worried concern. Of course this was wreaking havoc on Ryan's emotions. The situation was almost exactly like his. How could he not look for closure in this case? Drawing her eyes away, Beckett strictly refocused herself to the white board. Helping Kayla would help Ryan, so that was her main focus.

"I've got it! I've got the killer!"

She sat up straighter in surprise when she heard Castle's bellow echoed through the precinct. A timid Aaron was following him, and the writer was waving something in the air. She didn't know what to think, but she wasn't the only one. Montgomery and Esposito both turned to him in curiosity as he trotted towards her. Aaron followed him nervously.

"Go on, ask me what's up!" Castle said eagerly, almost bouncing in front of her when he closed the difference. Beckett spared a glance towards Aaron, who just seemed very nervous about the whole thing.

"What's up?" the suspicion sunk into her voice.

"What's up is that Aaron here, is a genius!" when Beckett glanced down to the child at Castle's mention, the boy looked away in embarrassment, and fiddled with his hands. She grinned slightly at Aaron's bashfulness before turning back to Castle, waiting for him to elaborate. "A couple of days ago, he found a video camera buried in a pile of clean clothes on the parents' dresser. And guess what's on it?"

"Shut the front door!" she gasped in joyous disbelief. A video of the murder would be all the proof they needed for an airtight case.

"That's right!" the writer practically squealed in joy. Then suddenly, his face morphed into a picture of distress as he handed her the video camera. "I'll watch Aaron while you and the guys watch it. Maybe not Ryan,"

Once again Kate was amazed at the true depth of the writer monkey's emotional capacity. Because he always acted like an immature eight year old, that's how she had grown accustomed to seeing him. She often forgot that when the right topic was mentioned, he became empathetic and sweet as hell.

"Yeah, okay," she said understandingly, and watched in an awed silence as Castle transformed back into a happier version of himself, and told Aaron that in the break room, there was a barrel of the best salt water taffy on earth that he needed the boy to try. The scared child seemed to relax slightly in the author's company and nodded gratefully.

Beckett refocused herself on the video and headed over to Esposito's desk. She had a feeling that she would need someone to watch it with.

"What've you got there?" the Hispanic man asked her without looking up from his computer screen. Somehow Esposito had the best peripheral vision ever. Therefore, he rarely needed to break eye contact with a computer screen. She had seen him stay focused with his eyes glued to that box for hours on end, barely blinking, and only moving to get coffee, if then.

"A video of Kayla's murder,"

Esposito broke eye contact, and swiveled his chair to meet Beckett's eyes directly.

•••

Ryan had taken a two minute bathroom break and when he stepped back out into the bullpen Beckett and Esposito were gone, and Castle was in the break room with a little boy. The detective immediately recognized the child as Kayla's older brother, and he couldn't help but sigh at the similarity of the two situations. He knew exactly what Aaron was going through.

Without making the conscious decision, his legs took him in the direction of the break room.

"Hey Castle. Do we have a new detective on duty?" he asked jokingly, wearing that smile to mask his turbulent emotions. He knew that it wasn't well hidden enough to fool Castle, but hopefully Aaron wouldn't notice.

"Yeah, this kid has been making breakthrough after breakthrough all over the place today. He could give Beckett a run for her money,"

Ryan noted, with more than a hint of sadness, that Aaron's shy, overly-modest behavior was heavy. The boy barely smiled at the praise, while most eleven year olds would let compliments inflate their egos to outrageous sizes. Ryan was an expert in this field, and noted all of the behaviors consistent with the boy's role in the family. He was introverted and withdrawn, so probably a "lost child" in the dysfunctional family roles. But at the same time, he was hesitant to accept praise, and nervous in nature. Probably jumpy too. Therefore he lived with some level of fear of harsh punishment.

Ryan bent down so he was face to face with the younger boy and looked him in the eyes. He didn't expect Aaron to be able to make eye contact with him, but to his great surprise, he met his gaze with a cautious, yet curious expression. The child seemed to be searching his eyes fervently as if looking for something specifically. For the first time in what felt like years, Ryan cracked a completely genuine smile at the little boy.

"So, you're helping us save the day, huh?" he asked the boy kindly. He didn't expect, however, the sudden reaction from Aaron.

Without warning, the boy reached out and wrapped Ryan in a hug. For a few seconds he was too shocked to react, but his childhood had taught him to adapt to things quickly, and taking care of his sisters had somewhat prepared him for this. Deliberately and tentatively, he reached out and returned the hug, careful not to frighten the boy away with any sudden gestures.

Looking over the boy's shoulder, Ryan saw Castle staring at the scene with a look of amazement and shock. Without even having to ask, he already knew what the writer was going to say to him. Still, he refused to move or break contact until Aaron ended the hug. He stayed there for a few more moments before he felt the boy move away. Aaron nervously shuffled his weight from leg to leg, but a small grin began to play on his face.

"Am I really allowed to have some of the cop candy?" he asked with a nervous sort of hopefulness, as if he was afraid that he'd offend someone by asking the question. Still, Ryan noticed that the boy was definitely more relaxed than he had been moments ago. Ryan grinned widely at the question to show that he wasn't going to hurt him for asking.

"Now, that candy is special for only our _very _best detectives," he paused momentarily, but couldn't bear to see the deflated look on the child's face, so spoke again quickly. "Help yourself to as much as you want. I'd recommend the green ones; they're the best," as he said it, he winked lightly and let his face break out into another wide, uninhibited grin that he hadn't worn in days.

The little boy actually managed a burst of excitement and trotted to the barrel before he started digging through it to find the nicest looking pieces. Ryan took that opportunity to talk to Castle about what he'd missed, and probably explain what had just happened.

"That kid wouldn't even let me hold his hand when we crossed the street five minutes ago. How did you…?"

"It takes one to know one," he explained bluntly, cutting the writer off. "Twenty years ago, I was that kid."

Ryan kept his eyes devoutly focused away from Castle's expression and on Aaron as he dug through that ridiculous barrel of taffy. The boy picked out a green one and examined it carefully before holding it up to Ryan from across the room with an expectant look on his face. Aaron was looking for his approval, and he didn't hesitate to give it. The Detective gave him an enthusiastic two thumbs up.

"Speaking of which…"

Uh-oh. Ryan knew that Castle's terrible transition meant another conversation about his past. He wasn't sure how many of those he could handle.

"One of the first tricks to writing an interesting story is you have to run everything through the grinder. You have to make your characters suffer, otherwise the audience will never care about them, or their journey. That's why when they eventually face the obstacle or cause of the suffering, and finally overcome it, everyone enjoys it,"

"Castle…" Ryan tried to cut him off awkwardly, but the writer wouldn't let him.

"I know that it's just fiction, but on some levels it's really not. It's life being portrayed in front of you. The characters have to come alive and the reader has to care for their plight. Stories have always been about the strength of man, overcoming the worst and surviving. And from the very broad description Esposito gave me, you've been through the worst and are still enduring. Not just that, you're also living. That takes a lot of strength of will. More than I can imagine," Castle sighed, and directed his attention to Aaron, just like Ryan was.

"While I won't be the one to tell it, you've got an inspiring story on your hands," with that Ryan felt Castle clap him on the shoulder amiably, signifying that the conversation was over.

Ryan was about to walk over to the barrel and take a few taffies out for himself, and maybe start a casual conversation with Aaron to keep him distracted when he saw Beckett and Esposito heading towards the break room.

"So, is it enough?" Castle asked the two eagerly, which gave Ryan the distinct impression that he was badly out of the loop.

"Oh, it's plenty. We're closing this case and putting him behind bars for a long time," Beckett said with a tainted grin. The smile was tight-lipped, as if she had just seen something horrible. Ryan could make guesses on what they had found, but he wanted to hear it.

"Whoa, what'd I miss?"

"Our boyfriend decided to take a video of his dirty little secret with Kayla and forgot about the camera in a pile of folded laundry on a dresser. It recorded everything, and the next day Aaron had found and taken it before the parents stumbled across it." Esposito filled in for his partner dryly, with a similar tone to how he recited off information about victims to Beckett at crime scenes. But it was enough.

"So, it's definitely the father?"

"Yep. Luke Evans is our killer,"

"And we can convict him?" Ryan knew how much he was starting to sound like Aaron with these afraid to be hopeful sounding questions, but couldn't care. If they finally put Kayla's murderer behind bars, then it'd all be worth it.

"This video is the definition of beyond a reasonable doubt,"

* * *

**Well? What did you think? Have I lost my touch? Does it suck? Was it adorable? Was the interrogation believable? I'd love to hear from you guys, assuming you're still waiting on me.**

** Anyway, here's the next chapter title.**

** Chapter Twenty Three: The Closure.**


	23. The Closure

**Hey guys! I'm sorry for the wait, once again, but I just finished writing Chapter Twenty Five, so as a reward, I'm posting this. It's kinda short though, so it's not that great of a reward. It's kind of a bridge chapter so I can wrap up Kayla's story arc as nicely as possible. **

**If you're getting bored with the story, then this is an okay place to cut off, but there is something pretty interesting (well, I think it's interesting. You may not, but I'm the writer, so I'm obligated to be biased in this area) coming up in the next few chapters. I'm considering ending it at chapter twenty five, but I'll need your input for that when I get there. **

**Okay, so enjoy this ridiculously short chapter!**

**Chapter Twenty Three: The Closure**

Beckett sighed and pushed her desk chair away from the massive stack of paperwork swarming her desk. She had officially processed the charges for Luke Evans, and now there was just an excessive amount of extra files to write up. Her hands were starting to cramp up after hours of writing, so after eying her "Instant Detective – just add coffee" mug a couple of times she finally decided for a well deserved refill.

Since his arrest, the precinct had quieted down until not a word was being spoken. Even those who didn't know the story knew that there was something personal with this case. Beckett was content to let them believe that the emotional baggage was hers. After all, she had plenty of emotional baggage already; it would be believable that she had some more.

Ryan had thanked her when she made up the lie. After all, he didn't want his story to become public knowledge. It was too hard for him; after all, he could barely deal with the people he trusted knowing his secret, let alone his work acquaintances.

She snuck as quietly as possible to the break room with her coffee-stained mug, eager for another espresso. She knew that the machine that Castle had bought them wasn't the quietest thing in the precinct, so when she placed the mug under the correct spigot and pulled the lever she winced at the sound it made. Normally, the volume of the espresso machine didn't bug her or anyone else, but then again there was usually noise and conversations in the precinct; it was unusual for everyone to be so silent.

She stared intensely at the rising line of coffee in the mug, and didn't see Castle come up behind her until she heard the quiet voice over her shoulder say "So…"

She hadn't been expecting to hear human voices for several more hours and flinched in surprise at the sound, letting half of her coffee splash out and dribble down the sides of the mug and her hand. She tried unsuccessfully to save face while wiping the sticky liquid off of the tabletop, the drawers, and her hands. She didn't bother wiping the sides of her mug, just the bottom. The sides had already been stained so many times that she barely bothered to try and stop new ones from appearing.

"Yes Castle?" she gritted out in annoyance at the writer. He may not have gotten her shirt soaked again, but it was still frustrating.

"I just wanted to congratulate you on getting Luke Evans. And possibly offer you taffy as a reward…?" Castle said with an expectant grin on his face. As he said it, he offered her a couple of red pieces eagerly as if he was waiting for her to take it as a sign of acceptance.

"I really didn't do anything; it was Ryan and Aaron who cracked this one. I just made the arrest," she said modestly, expecting Castle to repeal his offering of taffy. She didn't know why she expected that however, because his character suggested completely otherwise. Just like his actions.

"Well you got a confession out of him, and you got him behind bars. I'd say that deserves taffy," he offered the red candies again with a large smile and she couldn't help but accept.

"My favorite. How did you know?" she asked with a small grin as she took the largest piece, and carefully unwrapped it.

"Every time you snuck a piece when you thought no one was watching you always grabbed a red one. Cherry flavored, I believe," At that, he took one of the pieces that she had rejected and freed it from the wax paper before popping it in his mouth. After a couple of seconds of identifying the flavor, he nodded gleefully. "Yep, cherry. Very good too!"

"Mmm," she agreed in the process of chewing.

This was nice. This was what she had missed between them when she started dating Demming. She had missed the comfortable conversations after the cases over coffee and sometimes take-out. She missed the speculating on whether or not the people left over from the cases would get a happy ending, and how everything would turn out. She missed having a sympathetic ear at the end of the day.

Now could've been the time when she talked to him about their awkward good bye, or when she told him that she was no longer seeing Demming, or when she discussed what had happened between them. But she didn't. Many people probably would call it a missed opportunity, but she wouldn't. She didn't want to ruin the moment with unrelated conversations, or spoil the easy camaraderie that she'd fallen back into with him. Before anything else he was her partner, even if he wasn't a cop. For now she wouldn't try to look into anything more than that.

So they stood together silently in the break room, enjoying each other's easy company, drinking coffee and eating cherry salt water taffy, and offering a silent respect to Kayla.

•••

Beckett had long since gotten a confession out of Luke Evans and had locked him up. He was going to try to plead out. Afterwards, she talked to Mrs. Dawson, and patted her on the shoulder, saying something along the lines of "I understand why you didn't say anything, but now you're free." It had taken some convincing, but the mother agreed to testify in court against her husband. Beckett had told her that it might give her some sense of closure or liberation from him.

Ryan couldn't definitively say one way or the other about whether or not it was true, but he'd like to believe that it was. From Mrs. Dawson's post-arrest questioning for all the facts, they had learned a lot more about the family relationship. It wasn't as bad as his own past, but he saw how it affected everyone under that roof.

Up until a few months ago, there was never any fear of violence. The father had instigated fights with the mother for years before that though. Natalie Dawson said that they all started for no reason whatsoever, or at least little things that shouldn't cause so much conflict. But he blew them up more and more, until they were fighting constantly.

Mrs. Dawson had tried to avoid fighting in front of Kayla and Aaron, but they were loud, and the kids heard them fight through the walls. Sometimes, both of them had brought the kids into their fights, and Ryan knew that caused a lot of self-blame. Sometimes the father would direct his anger towards the kids, and yell at them for miniscule reasons like forgetting their homework at school and needing to go back to get it.

The violence was luckily in its early stages still, and had yet to become a regular occurrence like the fighting was. The first time she slapped him for being too unreasonable and he punched back, grabbing her arms and yelling at her not to disrespect him.

It didn't happen again for another couple of weeks, but then they were yelling and he lost control again and hit her until she fell to the ground. He called her a bitch, asking if she liked doing this to him, and that she was making him do this; that he didn't want to do it.

She walked with a limp for the next two days, and he didn't lash out again for another month, though their fights didn't cease. The only difference was that Natalie fought back less and less; instead of defending herself like she used to, she slowly began to slip into apologies and excuses. He became more verbally abusive and less reasonable; he called her a bitch, and a slut, and a whore, and a worthless piece of shit. And she just accepted it.

Then he broke her rib.

She didn't do too much for a while, because she couldn't move too much. On those days Aaron and Kayla took care of her a lot. On those days Jessie would pick them up, and drop them off, then sometimes come back to make dinner, but rarely anything else. Aaron and Kayla made most of the dinners for those three weeks of recovery time, but Mrs. Dawson said she enjoyed that time immensely. They'd come home and run over to hug her, and start working on their homework on her bed. Afterwards, they'd talk and play board games, and watch TV. Mrs. Dawson said that she treasured those hours, and they helped her realize that she needed to get out before he crossed a line.

She waited a week after recovery to reintegrate herself back into her schedule before confronting her lawyer. At first she was hesitant about her requests, but after a week and a half, she realized that if she wasn't open with her lawyer, then she'd never be able to get free of him.

So she fearfully told the woman everything.

Once she got the okay from her lawyer, she talked to Jessie. All she said was to take the kids to the Met on Sunday morning, the day she was found murdered.

On that night, the fighting escalated to a zenith. They came in and sent Jessie away as quickly as they could, and then the shouting started; about what, she barely remembered, but somehow she managed to bring the argument into their bedroom. That's when they found Kayla.

_Maybe it was his method of coping. _That's what Mrs. Dawson said when they asked her about it, and Ryan could've cried again at the words. He wasn't sure if he would've cried in disappointment, sadness, or regret; it probably would have been a mixture of all three. She was still making excuses for him, even after what he did to her and her family. She wasn't completely free yet. After all, killing your daughter because she got raped is the most screwed up coping method ever. How could she even believe those words?

He had turned when he figured out what had happened and backhanded her, knocking her to the ground. He started yelling at her that it was her fault – that she had taught their daughter how to be a slut, and that she and "that goddamn babysitter tramp" probably did it on purpose to make her into a fag whore. Then he threw Kayla off the bed and to the floor before starting to hit and kick her. She begged him to stop hurting their baby daughter, and he just said that it was the man's job in a family to keep the worthless whores in line; to keep them normal looking.

Why was it always about image? Ryan wondered in a silent fury. No matter what happened, or what anyone did to each other inside the house, what was most important was that they looked like a normal happy family to the rest of the world; that they looked perfect. They needed nice things to seem wealthy, and they needed to dress nicely, and be the perfect looking couple, and the perfect parents. Because God forbid that anyone sees anything less than perfect.

At some point Kayla tried to run, but he grabbed her by the throat and threw her back towards the wall. Her head hit the large pot that held some plant and she started bleeding.

The rest was easy. He went down the fire escape and dropped her in the park, then came back up and started yelling at Natalie, saying that he'd kill her if she said a word about any of this, and that Aaron would find out what she did to her daughter.

Ryan heard the story from both Mrs. Dawson from behind the mirror, and then from Esposito after he watched the video. It horrified, sickened, and saddened him; the story was so familiar it was almost unbelievable.

But reality sometimes is like that.

Now, he was staring at the disk in its case. He wasn't supposed to have it; it should be in evidence right now. But he was going to hand it in… by the end of the day at max. Maybe sooner. Esposito had told him that it was horrible, and Ryan believed him. After all, he had seen these things before; he had lived them before.

So why was it so terrifying to see it one more time?

"Yo, it's over, bro," Esposito said, walking over to him happily. The entire precinct was happy about closing the case, even though the harsh reality was upsetting everyone as well. At the moment, it was easier to focus on the happy overview of it. After all, why wouldn't it be? Who wants to focus on the reality of that family's situation?

"Yeah, it's over," he agreed absentmindedly, still staring at the disk in his hand.

"No one would blame you for not watching it," Esposito said in a supportive and caring voice. Like the best friend he was.

"I know," he trailed off.

"But you would, wouldn't you?" Esposito knew him way too well, and was quick to call him on his bull. The fact of the matter was, he was terrified of watching it because of all the memories it dredged up, but at the same time he felt obligated. He didn't think it would bring him justice, or closure, or any feelings of comprehension. But he felt like he had to watch it, if only to conquer his fear of watching it.

"I have to,"

•••

Esposito looked up from the paperwork that seemed to be piling around his desk and glanced over to his partner again, to see him watching the video. He had glanced over every couple of minutes for the past hour and a half that Ryan had been watching it.

Maybe because he was afraid that Ryan would lose it again and run off without anyone knowing, or do something stupid, or he gets too overwhelmed right there. After all, it seemed to be a pattern of his to have best friends with heavy emotional baggage. Esposito had been taught that there was nothing more important than family, and always having their back. He grew up very protective of the people around him, and twice as loyal. Yet somehow, he had managed to screw up with Mark in eleventh grade, and then Ike three years ago. This time, he refused to screw it up by dropping his guard.

When he had watched it with Beckett, they were watching for at max forty minutes to get the full story. If they had just wanted to peg the father on the murder, it would've taken ten minutes at most. There was the rape in the very beginning, and then almost an hour and a half of Kayla just lying there in a shocked and traumatized stupor. Once or twice she had it in her to cry and try to shift her weight a bit, but never tried to get up and move. Even in the five minutes of fast-forwarding through the unimportant bits, he knew that it wasn't fair to Kayla. But they didn't have the time so it had to be done. It was also easier on both Beckett and him. As homicide detectives they could handle some pretty horrible things.

But not a child crying. Not like that.

Ryan on the other hand, was spending a full two and a half hours watching the entire thing in real-time, from start to finish. He never skipped anything. Esposito believed that morally his partner couldn't fast forward. He had been forced to live it in real-time, and he needed to give Kayla that respect.

For the most part he was doing fine so far, although Esposito was worried about the fact that he refused to blink or turn away for the horrible parts. No matter how tough they were as cops, Esposito had momentarily looked away from the screen a couple of times. Still, he wasn't losing it, or crying; just staring with an unimpeded devotion that very few people have the capacity for.

And trembling. It was barely noticeable, but Esposito couldn't miss it. His partner was trembling.

* * *

**So, what do you think? I miss hearing from you guys and I want to know your final opinions on the Kayla arc, because I promise that you won't be hearing from any of those characters again. What are your favorite parts of it? Did you think it was cliched? Did you see it coming? Etc... **

** And, of course, I won't forget the next chapter title.**

** Chapter Twenty Four: It's Time**


	24. It's Time

**Hey guys. I know that the wait has been long, but you guys are kinda letting me down here. I feel bad about guilt-tripping you for reviews but when I published chapter twenty two, I got nine reviews in three days time. When I published chapter twenty three, however, I waited two weeks and got a grand total of four reviews. I know that all of you have lives, but it really doesn't take so long to review, and I really miss hearing from all of you.**

**Chapter Twenty Four: It's Time**

In the way that things always do, the precinct went back to normal very quickly; soon it was as if this case had never existed. He knew that it was how cops deal with tough times; they made gallows humor, desensitized the cases, and in the worst of circumstances, they didn't say anything for a day or two then pretended that nothing had happened. But Esposito knew a bit better than the rest of the precinct that things didn't slip back to normal for everyone.

Ryan struggled to act as if they just closed another case, but it was still hard. Especially because the dissociative amnesia was wearing down, which meant that the amnestic barrier on his memories of abuse was deteriorating. For several weeks afterwards he struggled to try and integrate all of this new knowledge into the rest of his long term memories, but it wasn't easy. He really didn't talk about it much, but Esposito knew just how much it was affecting him. He began taking mornings off several days a week for the past three weeks, and came into the precinct even paler than he normally was, usually with dark circles under his eyes to provide a contrast.

After the case was closed Beckett had filled Montgomery in on some of the general details, so even though the Captain didn't know any specifics about the condition, he did understand Ryan's need for time. That, at least, was good. Montgomery was a good boss who looked out for his teams and Esposito respected that.

Esposito wanted to believe that most of his partner's memories had come back, and that the worst was over, but he knew it wasn't that simple. Reintegrating old memories into his consciousness, especially such horrible ones, was painful, and very meticulous. While Ryan was handling it almost expertly, his stress and emotional weight was clearly weighing him down. The entire team was faced with the difficult task of lightening up his workload without him – a trained detective – catching onto what they were doing.

But, Esposito had reason to be slightly hopeful. The dark bags underneath his partner's eyes, which he had learned over the past several weeks to treat as simply another feature on his face, had finally begun to recede and his normal, healthy coloring was starting to return. The calls from Jenny had finally started to slow down again to the normal calling schedule. Instead of one of the members of the cute couple checking in seven to eight times a day, the frequent communications had slowly begun to withdraw to the normal three to four calls a day.

He remembered how stressful those past few weeks had been. He was relieved at how few cases they had, because while paperwork was universally detested, it was also easier to handle than dead bodies. Ryan had been stumbling through the earlier parts of the breakdown of the amnestic barrier, and their team number had been reduced by one again.

Unfortunately, Castle had to leave to pick up Alexis the very next day, and none of them had seen him since. It was a simpler break this time, and there was less left unsaid between Castle and Beckett. They may not have spilled their guts out to each other, but they had come to an understanding where the tension was absent in this farewell. While the last time had been an ambiguous "good-bye," this one was more like a "see you soon enough."

Since then, the writer had called in several times to offer advice on cases, check up on the team, keep up to date on the latest news, and of course send them care packages. They still had yet to finish the ridiculous barrel of taffy sitting in their break room, but a considerable dent had been made in it, and more was taken every day.

There was still two more weeks left of summer, but Castle and little Castle both seemed to be waiting in anticipation for summer's end.

On the whole, Esposito figured that he should be happy with the way things were working out. Castle and Beckett were inching their way closer to taking action on the feelings that had been building for the past two years, Ryan was facing his memories and was beginning to accept them, and no more difficult and personal cases had cropped up lately. He should be hopeful for the future, shouldn't he?

Out of instinct, he pushed away from the stack of paperwork he'd been focused on and checked the time on his desk computer. He would be able to clock out by now, so he picked up his phone and hit speed dial #5. He simply did what he had done instinctively a couple of times in the past several months for no reason in particular.

He called Lanie.

"I don't have a body of yours, Detective."

"I know," he said smoothly and calmly. No more needed to be said.

"You'd better be paying for drinks," she replied with a humorous sarcasm.

"I was raised right," he said with mock indignance, "I have manners."

"Is that so?" she jabbed again with a voice that made him hear the grin spreading across her face. "A man with manners?"

"We are a dying breed," he grinned when his comment was received with a quick but uninhibited laugh from her end of the phone.

"Alright, meet in ten?"

"See you there," he confirmed before hanging up.

That night, after they closed the Evans case and he made sure that his partner had gotten home safely, Esposito had texted Lanie to meet at their usual bar where he filled her in to all the details of the case and Ryan's story. He hadn't cried, but his voice had gotten gravelly and he had gotten frustrated when he told it. His vision even blurred a little, but he refused to let the tears fall; if he did, that would mean Luke Evans had won. Lanie had kept silent for the entire story, only making her presence known by one of her hands softly stroking his clenched fists to try and calm him down slightly. It had helped, and when the story was finished, Lanie began to ask her questions and voice her opinions. To her credit, she handled the overwhelming story with grace and had taken everything in stride.

He remembers ranting about how pointless the entire thing was, and how anyone could do that to family. She quietly replied with a sad "I don't know." Esposito had felt bad that he was the one losing it, when he had already had time to process the information, while Lanie, who was being overwhelmed with it now, was keeping a level head.

A few times after that night he had gone to her, or Doc Holloway to get a better understanding of what his partner was going through with the breakdown of the amnestic barrier, what the reintegration of the memories would be like, and how much time it would take. Holloway had explained that it could take years to fully reconcile his buried memories with the rest of his childhood, but the next month was going to be the hardest because he wouldn't know what to expect, and the trauma would be more or less new to him. After that, he should know what to be expecting, and be better able to cope with the memories.

But that was then.

Now he needed to ask Lanie the question he'd been waiting almost a month to bring up.

He grinned slightly when he heard the familiar strut of her walk in those ridiculous heels she liked, and swiveled his barstool to face her. He was already cradling a beer in one hand, and by the time she sat down next to him the bartender had delivered her drink that he had preordered.

"Mojito on the rocks," he commented simply. "Your favorite."

"Glad to know I'm that predictable," she said sarcastically before taking a sip of the minty concoction in front of her. The slight moan of satisfaction was his signal that she approved. "So, what's on your mind?"

"Will things go back to normal?" He hadn't expected to be so blunt, and yet the words had been unleashed on the world and the medical examiner and there was no retracting them for finessing.

"For the most part, I'd say yeah. Your boy Ryan's strong, and has handled it for twenty years. Now's difficult because of the memory barrier, but he's facing his past, isn't hiding anymore, and he's reigning control on his reaction to the memories now. He'll always have that baggage with him, but it'll become a load that he doesn't mind carrying. It's like Kate; she hasn't gotten over her mother's murder, and certain situations will make it more difficult to deal with, but for the most part she's come to accept it as a part of herself. Ryan will too."

He sighed in sympathy for his two team members, but something still haunted him.

"For a while though Beckett was scared to reopen the case; you remember the incident with Castle, and then Dick Coonan," he spoke deep in thought, only sure of where he was going when the words left his mouth. "She ran away from it because she didn't think she could handle it, but she did. The case with Coonan is what helped her overcome it. When she starts up Johanna's case again, she'll be able to do it with a clearer head."

Lanie seemed to know what he was getting at, even if he wasn't completely sure himself. So he was grateful when she filled in the next piece of what he was trying to articulate. "You don't think Ryan's overcome it yet? You're probably right, but he may not be ready to face his past yet. Give it time."

He knew better than to ask how long it would take because he knew Lanie would make some joke about him sounding like a six year old, then she'd honestly say that there was no way to tell. It didn't stop him though, from wanting to know the answer. He knew that Beckett could've been ready much earlier than she actually was, and she just let past fears and insecurities keep her from seeing that. It was a safe guess to say that Ryan would do the same thing.

Esposito paused deep in thought, considering the ramifications to the ideas running through his mind. Finally making a decision, he pulled out his cell phone and turned to Lanie apologetically. "I've got to make a call," he said bluntly and vaguely before making space between him and the M.E. so she wouldn't overhear.

He didn't know if he was doing the right thing or not, but he wouldn't take any definitive action until he got the okay.

•••

"You haven't recently sustained brain damage, have you?" Ryan didn't mean to snap but the suggestion had come out of the blue, and he didn't know how to handle it. "Because there's no way you could actually, in your right mind, believe this is a good idea,"

"Listen, you can say no…"

"Good," Ryan interrupted his partner before he could finish the sentence with a solemn face. His voice wasn't higher or lower than its normal volume, but the serious voice added to his intensity of the answer. "No."

"You can say no," Esposito continued as if he hadn't been interrupted at all with a determined but sympathetic voice. "but at least give it some consideration first."

Ryan sighed in frustration and rubbed his neck stiffly for a long pause so he could gather up his thoughts. He wanted to have to say this once, and he wanted to be clear about it.

"Do you know what you're asking of me?" Ryan wished he could find the right words to fully describe what was going through his mind, and how terrifying the concept was. "Going back to that town, going back to the house, the woods… We ran away twenty years ago for a reason. We never looked back for a reason. Asking me to face him after all these years…"

"I'm not going to do anything without your approval, but I promise that if you decide to face him, you'll have Honey milk and me to back you up. I already talked to her, and she said she'd be there the entire way. You wouldn't be going through it alone. For now, I don't expect an answer; just think about it,"

With that last comment, Esposito turned back to his desk and went back to writing up paperwork, as if he had just asked Ryan about the outcome of last night's game, and not about him facing the monster from his nightmares for the first time in twenty years. Ryan still sat there, unmoving, frozen in that position, trying to grasp the bomb that his partner had just dropped on him.

After several moments he shook himself out of the shocked stupor he was stuck in and turned back to the paperwork on his desk, not fully able to concentrate on reading the words on the files. He wasn't even sure how to process this. It had been three weeks; he should have overcome this by now.

No, he corrected himself mentally. It had been _twenty years_; he should've overcome this by now. It shouldn't have bothered him during the case as much as it did; he shouldn't have needed all those mornings off, but he did. He knew what everyone was saying – that it was a difficult process remembering everything and he shouldn't feel guilty about needing time off – but he couldn't help his embarrassment because of it.

From the moment he met Luke Evans and saw the bruises on Natalie Dawson's wrists everything that had been so carefully walled off in his mind had slowly come crashing down. Suddenly the memories he retained from his childhood hadn't been enough anymore, so his mind needed to dig away at the wall until little wisps of horrible memories came seeping out through the cracks. Ryan hadn't asked for them to come back into his life, and he didn't want them back in his life. He was better off without them.

But the weathering had already started, so there was no way to stop the total decomposition of that wall, and the flood of trauma that came with it. More often than not he couldn't sleep through the night because another memory would leak through into REM. Any small trigger would awaken something horrible, at any moment and he wasn't sure how well he was handling it. One day at work a pen exploded on him, and without warning he remembered when something similar happened when he was ten and he ruined his Sunday shirt. His Dad was furious that day…

He had needed to rush to the deserted precinct gym to get away from the bullpen, and when Beckett had found him forty minutes later, she punched him out and helped him get home. It was embarrassing, and if a pen had that intense of an effect on him, he was afraid what his hometown could do.

It shouldn't be this hard to go visit a town. He wasn't sure what had happened to his father. He might have passed away; he might've moved. However, the moment that thought entered his head, Ryan dismissed it quickly; his father loved that town and wouldn't have moved from that house. The man had been raised in that house; there's no way he could leave. So, if he were to do this, he'd have to face the man who was responsible for his birth, and responsible for his sister's death.

Try as he might, Ryan was unable to get much of any work done that entire day. He simply went through the motions of the day until he was able to go home. Even Jenny's presence at his apartment wasn't as much of a comfort as it usually was. A single look at his face, and she knew what had happened.

"He talked to you today, didn't he?"

"Yeah," he got out in a distracted voice, his eyes stared unblinkingly at some random space in front of him but he didn't really process any of what he was seeing. "How long have you known about this?"

"Javier asked me about it a couple of days ago, and I agreed to go if you wanted to, but I won't push you to do anything you're not ready for," she said kindly.

She was always kind and sympathetic. Never once did she get frustrated when he woke up in the middle of the night to a car horn, or with a nightmare. She always took care of him and cooked when he hadn't eaten in hours, or massaged him when the job sent him home sore, and always called or texted to make sure he was okay and not injured on the job.

He didn't deserve her, and she didn't deserve the kind of emotional roller coaster that he was dragging her through. She shouldn't have to watch him walking through the rooms of his house and completely losing it over every little memory. And more than anything, he didn't want her to meet the monster that was his father. He didn't want to put her in that line of fire. How could he open her up to the possibility of such abuse?

"What do you think I should do?" he asked her finally. She always had his best interests at heart, and he needed to have her opinion.

"It's not a good idea if you're not ready, no matter what. But if you think that you could handle it, then I think that it would be a kind of closure, which is something you probably need. And Javier and I would be with you the entire time for support," she grinned and took his hands in hers. He finally refocused and met her eyes intently, hoping to find the answers there. "I think that you should sleep on it, and then decide."

With that, she kissed him lovingly, and then after a moment, moved back to the kitchen, where she had something magnificent on the stove, leaving him to reflect on her words. Just like Esposito, she asked him the same thing.

So, as requested, he sat down and began to think about it.

•••

Two days since he had asked, Esposito was still waiting on an answer, but he knew better than to push it. He couldn't imagine how difficult of a decision it was, and he didn't try to pretend that he could know. All he did was focus on work as if nothing was out of the ordinary, and keep his phone on.

He was at home, sitting in front of his Xbox 360 console while Call of Duty played out in front of him on the TV screen. Video games were one of his best methods to de-stress from the difficulty of his job. He didn't know why shoot-em-up games and war scenes helped him forget about his job, seeing as they were more similar than he'd like, but it somehow worked. Of course, he usually preferred Madden or Halo to Call of Duty, but since they had been light on cases lately, he felt up for the more reality-based war game.

While they'd had a couple of cases since the Evans case, most of them were short and straightforward in nature. In between those few cases there was a heavy load of paperwork like there always was. He was grateful for the decrease in activity because it made it easier for him to keep tabs on his partner, and make watch to make sure he was handling the stress well enough.

When his phone rang, he tensed visibly. The only reasons someone called this late would be because of a body or because something horrible happened with Ryan. He knew it was probably the former of the two, since he'd overreacted when Beckett called about the other murders too, but he couldn't help that he always prepared for the worst. It was in his nature. The fact that Ryan's was the ID that popped up didn't help matters, but at least it wasn't Jenny's number, he reassured himself.

"Esposito," his generic greeting came out instinctively, but grew uneasy when no immediate reply met him. After a moment a single quiet word came.

"Okay,"

Esposito didn't need the context to know what he was referencing.

"You sure?"

"Yeah," his partner's voice stayed quiet, and had that fearful tone that he'd gotten used to, but echoed with that determination that Esposito recognized in his partner in almost every case. It was always subtle, not like Beckett's more obvious crusader resolution, but it was just as unwavering and strong-willed. "It's time."

* * *

**So, I'd like to know what you think. Since the reviews were so poor for this chapter, I'm not going to tell you the next chapter's title, but if you review, I'll tell you in my reply! I know it's not the best of bribes, but it's all I've got. **


	25. Till the Wheels Fall Off

**Aww, I'm kinda bummed that I didn't get this out in time for New Year's Eve, but hey! At least I got it out in time for New Year's Day... if you can call it that. I've actually got four minutes until it's January 2nd, so it barely counts, but it still counts. I haven't had any time to write chapter twenty six, so I'm afraid the next one's going to be a long wait, I'm so sorry! But at least this one is much longer than usual, so it's more story to tide you over until college applications are out of the way. **

**Also, thank you for all the reviews! I love it when you guys do that and I hope I hear from all of you again. **

**Chapter Twenty Five: 'Till the Wheels Fall Off**

Ryan had been so sure when he had said yes to Esposito. Even though he was terrified, he knew that this was just something he needed to do. No matter how many times he worried about it and wondered what was going to happen, and what horrible memories would resurface, he never psyched himself out so much that he wanted to back out. Not when Esposito started talking about flight dates and times, not when he talked to the Captain about the week off, not when Jenny pulled out his old duffel bag and said that they needed to pack, not when he gate-checked his bag, not even as the plane took off. He didn't regret his decision once.

Not once that is, until Esposito, Jenny, and him were at the desk of the Hertz Rent-a-Car place next to the airport. He didn't know why the panic attack started at the Rent-a-Car; in all of those journey movies the flight instinct usually kicked in at some no-turning-back-now moment. He had expected to try and back out when the plane took flight, because if this was some twisted Hollywood movie that was when the freaking out would start.

But nope. He had to go and defy clichés by panicking at the Rent-a-Car in front of his girlfriend, his partner, and "Kyle" the lethargic twenty year old at the Hertz desk who probably thought that he was fresh out of an asylum or something. He only knew the kid's name because of the cheesy nametag on his Hertz shirt.

"You know what? This is pointless. Nothing good will come out of it. How 'bout we just go home?" he turned to Jenny because he knew that she was most likely to cave. Esposito would never let him back out now.

"Honey, we're almost there. You're so close, and you've been so sure," she replied sympathetically but he could hear in her voice that she was determined not to budge. Esposito must've talked to her before.

"C'mon bro. Thirty miles. You've gone hundreds already; you're not gonna let the last thirty trip you up, are you?" Esposito challenged. Normally the challenge would work on him, but Ryan knew that his partner didn't have a full understanding of how hard this was. Dares wouldn't work on him this time.

"Yes," he said bluntly. "Yes I am."

Thirty miles left until they hit his small hometown that wasn't even deemed worthy enough to appear on a state map. And no matter how small the puny little smattering of buildings and houses was, it was still the hugest, most terrifying thing on the face of the planet. That town was dwarfed by only two things; the house and his father. If the town was the size of the Earth, then his old house was the size of Jupiter, and his father was the sun. After all, he did hurt everything that came too close.

"You were so sure," Jenny said softly as she walked up to face him.

He couldn't even look at her; his eyes quickly ducked down to the floor and he shook his head nervously. How could he have dragged her into the middle of something violent and brutal? He had known what he'd left; every day Ashleigh's death weighed on his conscience, and he had brought Jenny to the place where it happened. He was practically asking for more blood on his hands, and he didn't know how he could live with allowing his Jenny to get hurt.

But the woman didn't seem to accept it. He could see by her feet that she was right in front of him, and if he were to glance up, he'd be staring directly into her light gray eyes. That seemed to be her new mission too: to get him to look at her. She moved one of her petite hands up to his cheek and lightly wrapped her palm around his jawbone; the other hand found its way to his forearm. Ryan knew what she was doing, and didn't want to fall for them. He didn't want to let his guard down and let her convince him that it was okay, and that they weren't walking into a lion's den, and that everything would work out perfectly. Because the moment he let himself relax was always the moment when something horrible happened. The second he had let himself believe that everyone was safe his father had done something else horrible and it was his fault for not fixing it. Now he was dragging Javier and Jenny into it, and they expected him to calm down? He didn't want her to say the exact right thing, not this time.

"No, no, no… I… I can't. Not again. I can't do it again. Not with you, not with Javi," he mumbled, as much of a mantra to himself as it was a plea to her. "Back then… I couldn't… I'm not strong enough. I can't do that… not to you,"

He refused to let her penetrate the walls he set up. As a cop, he had to be good with safeguards. As a family protector, he had to have impenetrable walls. But he didn't, and Ashleigh suffered for it. But his fortifications hadn't been used in so long, Jenny barely noticed them. She leaned in closer and pressed her forehead to his affectionately, and his walls crumbled into dust.

"You can, you are. So long as you know it, you're ready to face this,"

Vaguely Ryan could hear Kyle asking his partner what the hell was wrong with "that dude" and somewhere he was pretty sure he could also hear Esposito telling the kid to shut the hell up. Normally he would care that someone besides Jenny and the team saw him like this, but right now, he couldn't bring himself to be bothered with it. He didn't think he'd be seeing this Kyle again in his life. He focused entirely on the battle raging inside his head.

Jenny finally moved her face away from his and gently turned his face up, forcing him to look at her. Nervously he met her eyes and tried to decipher what was in them. He knew immediately what he'd see, and it killed him. All of the worry he'd seen in her face for him since his past had come back, all of the sleepless nights calming him, all of the back rubs, and warm honey milk made when nightmares kept him up, all of the calls and texts to make sure he wasn't shot on the job. She had put up with so much that she didn't deserve for his sake. All of his reasoning came back to him and fought against his terror.

"Okay," he finally said, his voice barely perceptible. Lightly, he took in his surroundings in that damn Hertz office. Kyle was staring at him like he expected a mental breakdown at any moment. Esposito was watching warily, while still trying to give him and Jenny some privacy. Ryan sighed, and turned his gaze back to Jenny before mumbling more audibly. "Have Esposito go and get the goddamn car before I try to back out again."

•••

Esposito went to get the car, thinking back on what had just happened. He was surprised that it hadn't happened earlier. He half expected it at the gate, not the car rental place. But he had known this was going to happen.

No more than a few hours after Ryan had agreed to this journey idea he had rushed off to find Holloway and ask what he should expect. The number one thing the psychologist had told him to look out for would be a flip-flopping verdict on whether to go through with it. The way Holloway talked about it too, Esposito was proud of his partner that he hadn't tried to back out until now.

The desk manager who was clearly some college student looking to earn a bit of spending cash – Kyle, he thought his name was – led him around to the car that they would be using. After a once-over Esposito nodded in approval, but, as the always suspicious New Yorker, he insisted on taking a better look. To someone from this area he might've looked paranoid, but it was just his way; and so he circled the car to carefully inspect each of the tires. After a full circle, he climbed in the car and tentatively drove around the parking lot to see how it ran, and checked the gas to make sure they had filled the tank.

By the time he stepped out of the car, that irritating teenager had his arms crossed impatiently, and one eyebrow way up in the air but Esposito didn't mind it. So long as he wasn't being ripped off, he didn't care how pissy the kid got at him. He was satisfied with the car, so he let Kyle drive it to the front and he paid for the rental.

Once he took the keys from the kid again, he went straight to the car and climbed into the driver's seat. The small car was nowhere near as comfortable as their undercover van, or even "cubo de basura," the car he and Ryan took most often when going on road trips. From the Spanish, it quite literally meant "junk bucket" or "crap bucket" depending on his mood. It got the name after they had gone on a road trip to Connecticut, and the battery had died in the middle of a very hilly, rural town. It didn't help that it was pouring rain outside that day. They called it the Junk Bucket, or the Spanish version of that for weeks afterwards, and the name stuck, even though they've never had another problem with it. When Castle wrote Heat Wave, he had heard the Connecticut story and included it in the book, renaming the Junk Bucket to be called the "Roach Coach."

He waited in the idle car, not wanting to return to the office and interrupt some private moment between Ryan and his girlfriend.

Instead, he started fiddling with the knobs on the dashboard to figure out how to blast the air conditioner. Of course, Ryan was the Tech God, not him. Sure, he was better in the field, but his partner had the more well-rounded experience. Still, it was a junky rental car, and even he – the technology inept one – could eventually figure out the car's temperature with some trial and error.

It was, after all, late August in the middle of the country, and an unwelcome heat wave had begun to settle in the area languorously. Not that New York was much better, but none of them expected to stay for very long; two nights at the very most. Therefore, everything Esposito needed was packed in a small leather rucksack that he had abandoned in the passenger seat next to him. Similarly, his partner was carrying a light backpack with little more than a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and the New York Times, which he'd read on the plane. After all, those were the only things that they really needed.

Except for their guns, which they had to check in a particular bag.

He turned when he saw Ryan and Honeymilk heading towards the trunk of the car to stash away her luggage. For some reason, she didn't get the memo to pack lightly, and had taken enough to last her at least a week. He had seen the overwhelming about of useless stuff when she had to dig through her bag to remove her liquids. For the life of him, he could never figure out why a woman would need seven outfits for two days, or what she could possibly do with so many little bottles. Esposito knew better than to ask.

Without saying, Ryan and Jenny slipped into the back seat, leaving Esposito alone up front. Had it been any other time he would've gotten annoyed by the role of chauffer, but this wasn't about him; this was about Ryan, and the man needed his girlfriend. He wasn't about to interfere with something so important.

So he silently shifted the car out of idle, and drove out of the Rent-a-Car place, towards the long road.

•••

With each crunching revolution the tires made to close the distance between the airport and their destination, he could feel time rewinding itself. Every inch that brought him closer to the nightmare he ran away from took days and months and years of healing away from his features, leaving him stripped and bare: vulnerable to the monsters he was about to face.

Nothing had changed since he had helped his family run away twenty years ago. He didn't know why, but he expected things to have changed slightly. He had gotten used to the ever shifting scenery of New York, and had almost forgotten what it was like to live in a place where nothing was ever demolished or renovated. His childhood memories of the road leading to town seemed to have been preserved over all this time along with the entire town. Capsulated in this protective bubble to avoid wound, the town remained unscathed by the changing world of today.

The stagnancy and expectancy of it all made Ryan's skin crawl.

They first pulled up to the cheap motel that had stood in the town, barely used, for as long as he could remember. They just checked in for the rooms they'd be staying in; Jenny and Ryan in one room, with Esposito crashing in the next room over with an adjoining door, in case of an emergency. No one bothered to unpack in their rooms though. He planned on them leaving tomorrow. Even Jenny's over-packed bag wasn't opened. The bags were thrown on the floor, the key card to the room was pocketed in his wallet, and then he left the small motel room immediately. Without a word, Esposito and Jenny followed.

The rest of the very small town was easily a walking distance from the motel, so he didn't bother with the car. In all honesty, very few people did. There were some bikes leaning against buildings, and people who lived a bit out of the way like he had brought cars, but that was a small number. Besides, taking a car would be the wrong way to go about it. Ryan needed to walk through the town step by step, the way he did twenty years ago. He needed to prove that he was a different person now; that he was a stronger person.

He started with the small movie theater that still only had two theaters for movies, and moved up. There was a book store and a small library, and a tiny park that still just meant a small, fenced off square of grass with a bench. There was the small police station that was coupled with a firetruck parked right next to it. ATM machine, the bar, and two clothing stores, and then his eyes fell on the super market/drug store. His Dad used to own it; probably still did with the way the town wasn't progressing.

He could avoid it easily. It would be easier and safer and more practical, but he couldn't.

Dimly, he was aware that his partner and his girlfriend were trailing behind him, but he didn't pay it much attention. They would move to walk next to him when they wanted to, or if they started to think that he needed it. If he really did need them, he'd ask. Otherwise, he was glad that he could feel like he was doing this on his own.

The same bell rang as he swung the door to the food market open.

He was almost getting tired of how many times he noted – each time with some unexplainable surprise – that nothing appeared changed. The shelves, the aisles, the pharmacy in the very back, the single cash register in the front, the placement of all the foods; it was all precisely the same. The paint didn't even seem worn by age or newly painted; like the rest of the town, everything seemed to be preserved unerringly from his memory. He could've gone back in time and it wouldn't make a difference. It was like time didn't pass in his hometown.

Suddenly, this didn't seem like the best of ideas. After all, if his father was at the store, then they'd almost certainly have the confrontation he feared in public, in front of this entire town. Ryan quickly scanned the small store, and was relieved when he didn't immediately spot what he thought his father would look like now.

His father would undoubtedly be one of those men who just naturally age well. His hair would have turned a respectable gray, but he wouldn't be bald. His skin may droop a little, but it wouldn't hide the strong bone structure, and he wouldn't have flabs of excess skin that had nothing to do but hang down in bags like turkey gobbles. He wouldn't be one of those old men who get very shaky in all their actions; he'd still be the sure, sturdy man he'd always been.

Exhaling audibly, Ryan made himself calm down. Now that the immediate threat was gone, he could actually absorb the building. Carefully he ran his fingers along the sides of each of the aisles, tentatively exploring each ridge, curve, and shape in the metal of the cans. He remembered when he had to stand on his tip-toes to reach the top shelf; now it only measured up to his forearms. He half expected to find dust gathering on the bags of chips, boxes of dried pasta, cans of soup, and jars of jam, but everything was fresh.

He didn't say a word and didn't pull his eyes away from the aisles until he had touched, scanned, analyzed, and memorized each shelf. He didn't know why, but he couldn't help himself; there was some strange, morbid fascination with all the foods obediently in place, fulfilling their purposes to obey his father's commend. Like soldiers.

Finally he pulled his eyes away and turned to address the young cashier. Once again, the kid was in his early twenties, and barely looked older than Kyle back at Rent-a-Car. He didn't have a nametag for Ryan to identify him, but he assumed that was because the entire town already knew him. The kid's confused stare only proved that; he was surprised that someone came in that he didn't recognize. Ryan admitted to himself that he had been behaving weirdly too. If he were in the kid's place, he would be even more confused than the cashier looked. Two people in suit-pants and a woman that he didn't recognize in a know-everyone town come in as if this was a habit, and examine the supermarket.

"Can I help you with something?" the kid asked him, uncomfortable under Ryan's curious glance.

"Yeah. Does Pete Decker still own this place?" he asked tentatively, but with an air of attempted casualness.

"Of course," the kid said with a shrug, as if it would be ridiculous to assume otherwise. Well, Ryan supposed it was a bit ridiculous. The man loved his day-to-day routine. "Why?"

"I'm looking for him. Do you know where I'd be able to find him?"

"Probably at his house, but I dunno, never thought to confirm it. He makes his appearance at the bar sometimes around seven. But otherwise, he's more of a private guy," The town really hadn't changed at all; people still had their neighbor's backs. The boy's eyes narrowed at Ryan suspiciously. "If I run into him, who should I say is looking for him?"

"Don't bother, I'll find him eventually. Thanks for the help,"

With that, Ryan walked out of the grocery store and back outside.

His father was definitely still alive; that much he knew for a fact now. He had assumed as much, but the confirmation was more difficult than he expected. He honestly didn't know what to do for a second, and was grateful when Jenny and Esposito knew to approach him. Jenny faced him silently for a moment before reaching out to grasp his hands in hers. He expected her to speak, some words of encouragement or praise, or something like that, but nothing came. Part of him was relieved when the first person to speak was Esposito, who understood guy code, and knew what to say.

"Where to next?"

"The school," he said, surprising himself. He hadn't even thought of his Elementary School as a place he'd want to visit but in reflection, it made a great deal of sense. With the exception of the woods around his house, school was one of the few places he went to escape the house. And while it was hardly a safe haven, he had spent a good deal of his childhood there. "It's just down the road."

Once again, he began walking as if isolated in a strange, floating dream state. Esposito and Jenny began trailing behind him again, but he didn't pay them much attention. He knew they'd follow to make sure he was okay.

He wondered if it would be the same too, and if he'd be surprised when he saw its inevitable similarity to his memory. He probably would, even with his knowledge of what it'd look like. It would still have that pathetic attempt at a small basketball court, the small set of two swings, and the jungle gym. It was mainly just a mountain made out of tires that kids could climb up, hide in, and sit on top of. There'd also be an empty part of the field for games like tag, dodgeball, baseball, soccer, and other basic playground games.

Being an elementary school, the building wouldn't be locked, even if everyone was gone. The office and the nurse would be locked, but everything else was more or less wide open. Luckily, it was a Thursday and if the schedules hadn't changed – which he assumed by now that they hadn't – then the kids were let out not more than an hour ago. He wouldn't feel uncomfortable walking through a completely deserted elementary school, nor would be have to deal with hoards of students. Maybe just a janitor or two; possibly a couple of teachers on their way out.

As much as he planned for the pointless shock of its identical condition to his memories, it still caught him blindsided. In the same need he'd had to touch and examine the shelves in the grocery store, he was compelled to start wandering the playground from his distant memories. Needing to slowly walk through the basketball court, circle the tire mountain lazily, reaching to feel the scorching heat of each of the tires absorbing the heat of August. He felt through the tires, checking in a few of the pockets, half expecting to find the same toys stashed away there.

He took notice of every inch of the playground that he hadn't thought about in years. When he got to a particular tree, he stopped in a daze and stared. His mind couldn't even work. He distantly heard Esposito and Jenny coming closer to make sure he didn't lose it. There was no way he could communicate to them why he was just standing there, so he decided not to bother until he checked to see if there was even something to explain to them.

Without a word, he began to climb the tree.

It didn't take more than a couple of steps to get up to the high-up area that used to be next to impossible to climb when he was younger. No one else besides him could ever climb that high. He could even go higher than that now, but it wasn't the height that was important. Halfway up, there was a hollow knot in the tree that was slanted inward to protect it from the elements. As any child knows, it's the perfect hiding place; especially when no one else could reach it.

He was afraid to look inside, and he when he gathered up the courage, he was sure that all of the color had completely drained from his face. Gingerly, he reached in and pulled out the object, slightly worn down and a bit dirtier from sitting in a thin layer of soil at the bottom of the nook, but almost completely intact. When he noticed that he was shaking, he snapped out of his trance and carefully climbed back down. He knew the questions were going to come soon.

"What've you got there?" Esposito asked carefully.

He could still feel his entire body shaking, and Jenny must've been acutely aware of it too, because she led him to the swings and gently coaxed him to sit down in one of them. She took the other on his right, and Esposito was content to lean on one of the poles supporting the structure. Ryan took a couple of heavy shuddering breaths to calm himself down. He wasn't sure if he was able to tell this story yet; it was one of the more recent memories that had been completely recovered. He had remembered the treasure he hid in the tree, but only a week or so ago did he fully remember why.

"It was during one of the really bad fights before Ashleigh and just after Beth's dodgeball fiasco. Just like the TV room was Dad's shrine to avoid all of us, Mom always had the living room. Besides her baby pictures and our baby pictures she also kept postcards of cities all over the North East, though her favorites were the three that appeared most often in her stories: New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. She also had all of these knickknacks to better tell us, like paperweights of the Statue of Liberty, mini-statues of the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia, that blue porcelain, Egyptian Hippo from the Met, a tiny replica of the Zakim Bridge in Boston, even this glass figurine of a seal that she said she bought at an aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut."

He sighed, nostalgia radiating from every fiber of his being. That living room had always been like a miniature conglomeration of the three most beloved cities in the Northeast. All the postcards just made for fantastical backdrops, almost like how girls played with paper dolls back in colonial times. It hurt to think about what had happened to that Lilliputian sanctuary.

"There was a fight," he said slowly. Definitively. This had been very well buried by the dissociative amnesia, and the amnestic barrier that broke down with this memory was particularly difficult. "He was upset about her obvious hatred of the town, and how she was so obviously in love with the East Coast. This one spread across the entire house, and when they reached the living room, I barely had enough time to usher Tessa away before getting caught in the argument. He pushed me into the wooden coffee table and William shattered."

Noticing Jenny and Esposito's blank looks, he sheepishly clarified, "we named the blue hippo from the Met, William." Once they understood the connection, he slowly continued. "I got porcelain chards all in my palm and started bleeding, but didn't say a thing. Later I cleaned it out and bandaged it. He just started breaking everything he could; ripping up postcards, smashing figurines, breaking models. Mom was sobbing so much that night. I honestly think that was the reason she believed that she couldn't escape."

Slowly and with shaking hands, he unclenched his closed fist that held the small treasure. In his palm lay a small snow globe with deep blue glass. Inside was the Hayden Planetarium from the Natural History Museum with all of the fake blue lights aglow. It looked almost exactly like the real thing would at night. Outside, around the base was an inky, navy blue blackness, hand painted with stars, the constellation of Orion, a comet, and the moon. No matter how worn it looked from age, there was still a sense of beauty about it.

"This was the only thing I could save. I knew that if he ever saw it in the house, he'd kill her, so the next day I took it to school and hid it in the tree. I had planned to come back for it before we left, but we never could," he felt tears stinging his eyes over the small toy and had to take several deep breaths to calm himself down. "I can't believe it's still here after all these years…"

He never did get to hear his best friend's or his girlfriend's reaction to that story, because an unfamiliar voice several yards to the left of them suddenly broke through the air. "Dear Lord! I'm seeing a ghost!"

A man about Ryan's age walked up to him with shock and disbelief written all over his face. He had a briefcase, but didn't look too dressed up; long khaki shorts and a plain brown shirt. Ryan met his gaze for several long moments, trying to place him. The man appeared to be a teacher at the elementary school and knowing this town so well, it was very likely that Ryan knew this stranger once.

"Excuse me?" Esposito cut in for him, something Ryan was very grateful for. In that instant, he recognized him.

"Jesus! Kevin Decker, is that really you?" the incredulity was still very apparent in his voice.

"Cal Blaire," he addressed the teacher distantly, stunned into silence.

"Son of a bitch, it is you!" he replied with just as much disbelief. "What're you doing here?"

Finally, Ryan managed to snap back to reality and uncomfortably focused on directing the conversation to as not awkward of a place as this unexpected reunion possibly could be. "Just tying up some loose ends," he turned out to include the two people behind him in the conversation. "Jenny, Esposito, this is Cal Blaire. We were friends back in elementary school. Cal, this is my girlfriend, Jenny Mason, and my partner, Javier Esposito."

The three others took the time to shake hands and exchange polite "nice to meet you"s while Ryan tried to puzzle out his feelings on this strange encounter.

"So, you became a teacher," Jenny helped him out.

"Yeah, second grade. There are some really good kids, and I enjoy teaching where I went to school," there was a pause for a moment before he asked, "What do you do nowadays?"

"I actually live in New York City, and I'm a homicide detective."

"Wow," Cal replied after a moment's pause. "New York. That's pretty impressive. Much different than down here,"

"Very different," Ryan agreed. The uncomfortable pressure of speech between them was brutally obvious.

"So, what ever happened to you?" Cal seemed to blurt it out, as if it was against his better judgment, and he had not wanted to ask it. Still, once it was out there, he couldn't take it back, so he continued, unnerving Ryan in the process. "One day it was suddenly like you had vanished off the face of the earth."

"Ashleigh's disappearance had gotten cold and was filed as one of the unsolved cases, it was stressful to continue with daily routines, and we needed to get away. Dad lived here all his life though, and he couldn't leave, so we went and he stayed." Ryan hoped that the lie was enough of an answer to get him to drop it. No such luck.

"You never came back to visit for holidays, and Pete never went on any planes," he stated bluntly, waiting for an explanation.

"Things got tense," Ryan replied pointedly. "But I'm here now, and was just on my way to go find him."

"Well, far be it from me to keep you from your schedule," he politely said in a way that suggested that he knew more than he was letting on. Finally, he picked up his briefcase, began walking past Ryan, and spoke to suggest that the conversation was over. "It was nice to run into you like that. I'm glad that you overcame your incoordination,"

Ryan ran through the curious statement in his head and spun around, calling out after him, "Huh?" It wasn't his most eloquently phrased question, but it did the trick. Cal turned around with a sad smile.

"You always came into class with bruises on your arms and legs, or your hand bandaged from walking into stuff or tripping and falling. I'm glad that moving helped you find your balance,"

"Oh," was all Ryan could reply.

"Who knows? Maybe it was the change of scenery," Cal added with a wise smile on his face that Ryan couldn't help but reciprocate.

"Yeah, maybe."

With that, the old classmate turned around and continued to walk, leaving Ryan to stand in confused reflection with Jenny and Esposito. The small quirky grin stayed on his face, running through the conversation in his mind. He had certainly grown since Elementary school, though not in the way Cal believed he had. Or maybe exactly the way Cal suspected. The teacher had seemed to pick up on all of the discrepancies in his story, maybe he guessed at the truth. Maybe Cal had known what was happening all along. Maybe he only pieced it all together just now.

Maybe, Ryan thought, it was time for the confrontation that had motivated this entire trip.

"It's time," he said to Esposito, before turning to his girlfriend. She was the picture of sympathetic concern; her beautiful face filled with such purity, he thought he could've been looking at an angel. She had been a pillar of strength through all of this. That was why he had to do this. "Jen, I need you to do something for me. I can't go through with this unless you do,"

"What can I do Hon?" she asked kindly, stroking his arm. She would be willing to see this to the end. Which is why he wouldn't let her.

"I need you to go back to the motel," he saw her expression change and he continued before she had the chance to protest. "You have your key card and my gun. It's in that bag I checked. Keep it with you and keep it loaded. I showed you how to fire it. You'll be safe there. Please. I need you safe,"

"I can't let you lay your life on the line like that while I wait around waiting for a call to hear that you're okay!" she said quietly, but with urgency and worry laced through her voice.

"It's no different than what we do every day," He reasoned with a quiet pleading. She had to understand him; he couldn't risk her life any more than he already was. "Espo's got my back. He's got a gun if necessary. But I can't do this knowing that I'm putting you in danger. I need you at the motel. Please Jen."

The desperate beg seemed to hit home with her, and she finally looked up to meet Ryan's eyes sadly. Her eyes began to water slightly, but she just nodded and kissed him deeply as if trying to convey that he'd _better_ come back safe.

"You both have my number if something happens," she said sadly, before turning, and heading back in the direction of the motel. Ryan took a shuddering breath in relief, and turned to face his partner. The hispanic's face was carefully set to neutral, so he couldn't tell what his opinion was that he sent Jenny away.

"I had to," he justified, answering the unspoken question that hung in the air.

"I know," was Esposito's solemn reply.

Silently, Ryan turned in the direction that they had to go and started walking. He knew that his partner could read his mind and walked just as quietly next to him. They had walked like this thousands of times before, but never with something like this hanging in the air. Part of it felt like he was slowly being led to his execution. In all of the thousand times that he made the journey from his childhood home to school and back, there had always been a lingering sense of dread in the air, but now it felt magnified a thousand times over.

After years and years of time passing in his mind, the haunted house appeared in a thin wooded area just far enough away to be separate and isolated from the rest of the town. His entire body tensed, which seemed to clue Esposito into the fact that they were almost there.

"Thanks for everything, man," he got out in a strangled voice as they stepped onto the property.

"Don't mention it. 'Till the wheels fall off. Remember?"

"Yeah," he said with a shaky smile on his face to cover the pure terror that raged just beneath the surface. They were standing in front of the door now. He turned to look at his best friend one last time before reaching out to grasp the door knob. "Till the wheels fall off."

* * *

**Well, you all must want to strangle me right about now. But please don't! I'll have the next chapter out as soon as I can, and until then, I'm happy to reply to any and every review that I get! Speaking of which, you were fantastic last chapter so I definitely owe you the next chapter title.**

**Chapter Twenty Six: The Monster Under the Bed**


	26. The Monster Under the Bed

**Hey guys, I know I haven't updated in forever and I am SOOOOOO sorry! Things have been crazy lately (seriously, when are they not?) and I've been writer's blocked. I actually had no idea of what I wanted to happen in this chapter beforehand, so this chapter will probably seem a bit different from the rest. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but I've kept you waiting long enough, and I know myself well enough to know that I'm never going to be satisfied with it. **

**We're in the last leg guys! This is either going to be the second to last chapter, or the last chapter of Dredging Up the Past. (I'll explain below) Thanks for sticking with me all of this time! Here you go! The long-awaited arrival of Chapter Twenty Six!**

**Chapter Twenty Six: The Monster Under the Bed**

If Ryan wanted to get really theoretical, it was true that he _could have_ just twisted open the doorknob and marched right in with the metaphorical guns waving all over the place, but deep down he knew that in reality, the concept was impossible. He had been raised with nothing if not a strong set of morals, and one thing he knew for a fact was that it was impolite to just walk into a house that isn't yours without knocking. And this house hadn't been his for a long time. So, as he jerkily turned the weathered doorknob and pushed open the door, his other hand instinctively fisted and rapped politely on the wood.

"In here Rudd. Same as always ya crazy sonuva bitch," a gravelly, all too familiar voice rang out through the small one-floor colonial ranch and Ryan froze.

Each step seemed to pound in his temples like drums of war. For a moment, he was afraid he'd pass out, but his feet had other ideas. They were slowly taking him into his father's sanctuary, where Ryan knew he would be, in the living room with the liquor cabinets and the television. A thousand memories, some he's known forever, and others brand new in their old age, seeped into his mind. Watching him hit his Mother, watching him scream at Beth for spilling juice on the run, seeing him throw his Mother's precious collection to the floor, telling doctors at the hospital that his Mom fell down the stairs and he accidentally ran his wrist through a window, being grabbed by his throat, watching him kill Ashleigh. They would never go away, and he was about to face that man… that monster, once more after twenty years.

He glanced around the small kitchen and was mildly surprised to see how little it had changed since they left. It wasn't like he consciously expected it to change; after all, it had only been his Mom, and occasionally Tessa who actually used the kitchen. The extent of which his father had used the kitchen was to stick something in the microwave, or to put that something on a plate and grab a few necessary utensils.

The familiar photograph that stuck out from a pile of papers on the counter was what finally suggested that his father hadn't tried to really clean up since they left. That same pile had been sitting in the kitchen before they left, and that same photograph was sticking out slightly as well. He made a slow detour to the pile to retrieve the heart wrenching picture from the kitchen. It was one that was taken just a few weeks before Ashleigh's death and before Beth's dodgeball incident.

It had been over a week since anyone had _really _gotten beaten, so while their father was at work, they all decided to go for a picnic in the woods one Saturday. Mom had really been trying to get close to them, so he had suggested it. They ended up just packing a ton of apples because they had nothing else that could remotely be considered picnic food, but it was still fun. There were so few bruises that she actually felt comfortable wearing a sundress. He had taken the picture of her swooping all three girls up into a large hug when all of them were laughing. He had pressed the button at the perfect time, it was an amazing shot.

He slipped the photo into the safety of his wallet before remembering what he had come there to do, and turned back to make his way towards where he had heard the voice come from. Slowly, Ryan made his way through the small, poorly tiled kitchen towards that horrible room. At that moment he was distinctly aware of the lack of a gun in his belt, and was both unnerved by the fact that he didn't have it with him, and relieved by the thought that Jenny did. The hideous, mangled, green rug from his father's living room began to appear in his line of vision. A few more steps and he would confront his Dad once more.

"I told ya a thousand times, you don' need ta fuckin knock. The goddamn door's open fer a reason, y'know that Rudd," the mildly slurred, cracked voice rang out again.

Rudd was his father's old business partner and drinking buddy. Clearly they were still friends and still kept in regular contact, apparently because Rudd made regular trips up to the house. Back when he still living in the place, no one was allowed up to the house unannounced. For some reason no one found it strange, although it was strange in such a small and closely-knit town like this one was.

Ryan turned the final corner so he was standing in the doorway, watching the man that he'd been so terrified of flipping idly through the channels. His father hadn't even bothered to turn and look at him, devoutly staring at the rapidly changing screen. He didn't know exactly what he'd been expecting from the monster from his nightmares, but this was far from it. This couldn't be the cold-blooded killer of his own daughter. Sitting a few yards away in the worn down, faded armchair was a tired, weary, old man with sunken in eyes and a deadened expression.

The man in front of him had gray, wispy hair that certainly wasn't bald, but thinned everywhere. His skin drooped slightly, like all aging people do, but didn't hang in flabs like he knew it wouldn't. His skin was, however, more wrinkled than Ryan had imagined, and deep bags under his eyes that indicated a lack of sleep. The man's bone structure was still sharp and powerful, but drained by the hollow deadness in his dark eyes and the worn down nature of his entire person. He was still strong in appearance, but had gained a small potbelly that didn't attract too much attention, but still couldn't go undetected. A dark 5 'o clock shadow took over his face and made him look darker and more menacing than he ought to have. But then again, he was still menacing… he killed Ashleigh.

The image was fairly similar to the mental picture Ryan had in his mind earlier in the food market, so he couldn't figure out why he was surprised by the man's appearance. Maybe because he looked more worn out than expected, maybe because of the small temple of assumingly empty beer cans on the coffee table in front of him, maybe because of the disgusting, half eaten TV dinner of some dry thing that was once supposed to be steak, maybe because he was somehow both terrifying and pitiable at the same time, maybe because he was shocked to discover that he did find that sliver of pity for the man… maybe it was just because he was seeing his father for the first time in twenty years.

"Not quite," Ryan cursed his voice for cracking slightly at the words. Seeing his father in such a weakened state should've given him a burst of power, but all it did was belittle himself until he was proportionately weak in comparison to the person sitting in front of him, just like they always were.

Still, those two stuttering words had their impact and Pete Decker spun his head around wildly with a sudden, unexpected vigor of shock at the voice. Ryan flinched in a surprised reaction, almost believing that his father would give himself whiplash. Similar to the past when he had intersected so many fights and screaming matches between his family, his father met the intruder with blazing eyes. Instinctively, Ryan took a step back, away from the door frame and onto the same level as Esposito.

"The Hell're you and what're ya doin' in my fuckin' house?" Pete bellowed at Ryan, who took in each word with an incredulous surprise and fear. Of every possibility he had run through, not one of them involved his father not recognizing him, though he wasn't sure why. A lot changes in a person's appearance from the age of twelve to thirty two. Still, he had expected the man to remember his own son that he beat, abused, tortured, and traumatized.

"You don't know?" the detective probed, looking for the slightest hint of recognition. It never crossed Ryan's mind that his father wouldn't remember, but it was always possible. He had put up a mental block for so long to avoid painful memories. The mildly intoxicated man stood up from his chair, taking a moment to steady his wobbly, drunk legs before finding his balance and staring intently at Ryan's face. The rusted gears in his brain that were beginning to turn were almost audible in the tense silence, and all Ryan could think was that he was right, and that his father wasn't one of those shaky old men who can't keep their hands from trembling. Despite the liquid uncoordination plaguing his body, Pete Decker stood just as steady and strong as he had twenty years ago.

The intense analysis of his face unnerved him, and he barely had the nerve to maintain his gaze through the long moments. Next to him, Esposito stood tall and unmoving. Through his peripheral vision he could barely make out his partner's stoic face that he used when dealing with suspects. However, the rigid tension gave off the only indication that his best friend was nervous. Maybe almost as nervous as he was. His father continued to squint at him for a long time until finally the man's eyes widened, and he stumbled backwards slightly in shock. Ryan braced himself for the reaction.

"Kev'n?" the voice didn't have any recognizable emotion beyond the shock, and Ryan tensed, not knowing what to expect from the man. After a second, he figured out that he was supposed to confirm his father's guess, and replied tentatively.

"Long time,"

There was a long moment where no one moved, and the only indication that there was any life in the three men was the intense gazes that they held on each other. For a moment Ryan thought that the older man might break down, but in the next he was proven wrong. He didn't even comprehend what had happened until his back slammed against the wall loudly; mild pain shot down his spine as the light switch connected with his back, but he barely paid attention to it. The stench of beer seemed to exude from the man's every pore, but he was gasping for another reason.

Probably because Pete Decker had pinned him there with his arm pressed tightly against Ryan's neck.

•••

"Hey!" Esposito called out as soon as he saw what was happening, and leapt into action to try and pull the surprisingly strong man off of his partner.

Pete Decker paid the Hispanic no heed, focusing solely on Ryan

"Worthless piece of shit! Think ya can jus' show up here aft'r all this time like notta fuckin' day wen' by? Greedy bastard, still havn't learn'd yer fuckin' lesson!" The small town recluse wrenched his free arm out of Esposito's grip and swung it out to punch Ryan, still squirming to get out of the choke.

Esposito took that moment when the Pete was off balance to wrench him off of his gasping and terrified partner. Ryan would definitely be sporting a black eye later, if nothing else. After a momentary glance to make sure his partner didn't have any worse injuries, he turned to face the attacker. He may be a cop, but he was a friend first, and he was barely containing the impulse to swing a fist at his best friend's tormentor.

Esposito imagined someone more butch than what Pete Decker turned out to be, but he could almost see a looming monster that scared his children and beat his wife. He could imagine it to be freaking terrifying too.

Actually, no.

He couldn't imagine how freaking terrifying it would've been for Ryan or any of his sisters to experience. There were some sick people out there who could think that hurting kids could be "no big deal" and that they should learn how to tough it out and deal with it, then there those yet more twisted people who actually had the gall to go and hurt their children. Many of those terrible parents were abused themselves at a young age and that was the thing that tripped Esposito up the most. How could someone who knew so much pain possibly be able to turn around and inflict it on another person, not to mention their own child?

Once, every two weeks, Esposito's entire extended family converged in one home and had a giant homemade family dinner. His Abuelita told stories and legends. His Mom would play music, and he and his brother would play with his cousins. His Uncle could do the best magic tricks and still today the forever grinning man could stump him with his sleight of hand.

That was how family was supposed to be, intimate in nature, and filled with love and laughter. Family was supposed to be a group of people who brought safety, joy, and contentment into your life. There was no way in Hell that Esposito could even begin to comprehend what his partner had experienced in the earliest years of his life.

"What lesson was that, Dad?" Ryan finally spoke up, a bitterness enveloping and enunciating the paternal title to suggest everything except the loving archetype the word ought to mean. His voice was quiet and sad; he thought he could hear it shaking slightly. While the fear was evident in his face, it was clear he was doing everything he could to keep it out of his voice. "What fucking lesson haven't I learned yet?"

No, Esposito didn't have any clue at all.

•••

Gingerly, Jenny glanced to the side of her for what felt like the fiftieth time that minute. The sight to the left of her still didn't change, no matter how much she asked it to. The gun was still sitting there with a loud presence. Every moment that it stayed within an arm's reach, she couldn't help but be reminded that Kevin was in out there, in more danger than he'd ever been before, and she couldn't do anything to help.

It should make her feel better (or maybe it should make her feel worse) that he had walked into this danger all on his own, knowing what to expect, but it didn't. This time, she couldn't expect to find adorable text messages, flourished with several different smiley faces, lovable acronyms, and less-than-three's. There was no break in between the confrontation and when he came back to her again.

For all of the bags she'd packed and planning that she'd put into what she would take on this trip with her, none of them seemed to contain a way to make time pass by faster. Each second felt like an eternity, and the blinking colon in the crappy alarm clock only proved that fact. When she and Kevin were making breakfast in the morning time could not move faster, but now when she needed time the most, it trickled by with an infuriating sluggishness.

This time she just had to sit nervously in a poorly cooled motel room, practically cradling his only gun in her lap, and waiting for her man to return home safely.

And hope that when he returned (she refused to let herself even consider the possibility of an "if") he would all be in one piece.

•••

Ryan should be scared; he should be freaking terrified of his father, who had just punched him in the jaw and screamed the hell out of him. He always had been scared when that happened in his past, and he was just as scared when he walked in. So now, after the first punches had been thrown and the first verbal attacks hurled, he should be at the peak of his terror, waiting for whatever was next. And while he _was_ scared, there was something different. This time, he wasn't being overwhelmed by fear.

No, this time he was being overwhelmed by anger.

Finally he was looking at that man he called his father, and he was so beyond anger at everything that had happened that he could barely see straight. He couldn't even call it anger anymore; no, he was fucking pissed off now.

He was a kid. He was just a little kid. His sisters were so young and innocent that they had no clue what the hell was going on in that fractured house. His father was tormenting his Mother, and all of them. Tessa, and Beth, and Ashleigh never had to go to the hospital at least, but he had been there several times, and his Mom went there at least once a month.

He crept through all of their nightmares, plagued every shadow, destroyed their childhoods beyond repair. Ryan just felt lucky that Tessa and Beth barely remembered all of those times, and didn't fully understand what had happened. He counted his blessings that they just thought he was a deadbeat father with a drinking problem and anger issues.

Then he thought back to the worst night of his life, the night that he had betrayed his baby sister, and had let her be strangled, then hidden and buried. The night his father had stopped being his Dad, and fully embraced his role as the monster under the bed, and the demon in the shadows.

Back then he'd just been upset and guilty, and determined to protect the rest of his splintered family, but he was done now. Beth and Tessa were safe and leading their own lives far away from this damned town, his Mother was healing and taking care of herself back in Boston. They were all okay, he didn't have to fight for them anymore.

Now he was pissed, and the only person he had to fight for was himself.

"What lesson was that, Dad?" the word sounded foreign on his lips. The term of paternal endearment was supposed to be used with compassion and love. It wasn't supposed to be hissed out with fear, resentment, and rage. But he had never known the word to mean anything but that. He understood what it was supposed to mean, sure, but only secondhand: movies, books, television, or through their cases. He was supposed to meet Jenny's family over Labor Day weekend. That was when he was supposed to meet the man that he intended to become his father-in-law one day. He couldn't do that without first dealing with his own father.

His face hurt, but he didn't let himself show it. If he could help it, not another punch would be thrown, but he knew how unlikely that would be. The man who gave him half of his genes was now glaring furiously at him. He had talked back; he had questioned the man who was, as an unspoken rule, deemed his superior. Twenty years ago, that glare would be enough for him to instinctively raise his hands to protect his face from whatever blow could befall him. Now, he couldn't deny that the same impulse swept over him, but there was one difference.

This time, Ryan didn't want to hide.

This time, Ryan wanted to know.

"What fucking lesson haven't I learned yet?"

"Sonuva whore!" his father bellowed, and came at him again in a drunken attempt to backhand him, but Ryan was ready. He wasn't as skilled as his partner at the combat portion of police training, but he was still good, and could defend himself well. He deflected the strike easily and pushed the man away from him so as not to hurt him, but enough to get the message across that he wouldn't just take more abuse.

"Come on! What haven't I learned yet? Because you taught me plenty back when I was a kid!" he was shouting now, and it repulsed him that he could almost hear the similarity between his father's voice, and his own voice. Sure, he didn't have the gruff cracking in his voice that came from too many beers and too few regular glasses of water, and his voice was absent of the worn out roughness that made it sound like the man gargled with sand, but he still heard it. They had similar inflections, and though his father's voice was deeper, familiar tones.

It scared Ryan more than he could say.

Next to him, he could still see Esposito tensed from when his father had near choked him. His partner was clearly unsure of what to expect, and on edge about every movement between himself and his father. Ryan couldn't blame his best friend though; there was no way he could know what might happen. After all, the man had been lucky enough to live in a good home with a loving family. There was no way anyone who hadn't experienced dysfunction could prepare themselves for it.

He finally stilled and shifted his eyes back to meet those of his father's. The man was breathing heavily and wouldn't break his glare. The dark eyes bored into his – the crystal blue ones that he'd inherited from his Mom – and he knew that his father was just as terrified as he was. Ryan calmed himself down completely, and swallowed thickly to moisten his parched throat. He very rarely yelled, and so it always hurt when he did. But he had to know. He went twenty years trying to figure out the answer to that one question, and now he finally had the chance to ask it.

"What haven't I learned?" He repeated in a soft and careful voice that burned with no less of an intensity than his screaming had moments before. It was little more than a whisper, a question carried into the air on little more than a breath.

The reaction it caused was explosive in comparison.

"You're weak!" Pete Decker suddenly bellowed out in a ferocity that had Esposito taking a step back. "You've gotta be tough in this world, pathetic weak little bastard child! What else could ya expect from th' sonuva whore! Lettin' 'em walk all over ya… pathetic! Yuh never learn'd, boy! I kept tryin' t' tell ya, but ya never fuckin' learn'd!"

Ryan took a step back at the unexpected explosion. All the questions that essentially boiled down to one main subject, the one that had plagued his mind for all these years were finally being answered, and he struggled to make sense of the cryptic words. Why did he do it? How could he do it? How could he possibly justify everything? How could he actually see himself as being in the right? What drove him to thinking that it was okay? He knew that if he walked out of this house without those answers for the second time in his life, then he would never forgive himself. If he had to join Ashleigh to make sense of those questions, then he would.

The man was sounding more insane by the second as he paced across a couple of feet of rug, his hands flying wildly about to try and accentuate his elusive meaning through the gesticulations.

"Cuz that's how they work, boy! The little cogs runnin' in their heads, they won't admit it but that's how they work. It's all about what ya can get, that's all it is in their _**little game**_, and until you've squeezed out the last ya can, then they _**won't stop**_, y'hear? We've gotta be the ones to stop it, otherwise it won't ever end! They'll shrink yu down 'till you can't get any littler, then they just spit ya out! Not unless we stop it! That's what we have t' do, it's _**our fuckin' job**_ t'put an end t' it! Y'hear me, now? If we don' show 'em that we's the ones to be respected they'll just take 'till they's nothin' more left!"

Pete Decker, upon a closer examination, had bloodshot eyes that seemed to be widening with every unexpected bellow he gave to put emphasis on certain phrases and words. Ryan tried to follow him, but couldn't help but be lost in the hideously nonsensical jumble of statements. Unless his Father began making sense, then Ryan wouldn't ever be able to understand what he so desperately wanted to know.

"You'd think e'nuffs nuff, y'know! Love… _**HA**_! Jus' a shitty trick u' nature, it is! You don' wanna fall victim t' it, cuz then yur jus' damning yurself t' a lifetime of slave'ry. Th' mom'nt y' put th' ring on their finger they just fuckin' think they can _**take **_whatev'r they wan'! Yer job! _Yer life!_ _**Yer home!**_" With those words, Pete Decker grabbed the coffee table that cradled all the empty beers and yanked it up, flipping it over in Ryan and Esposito's direction. Beer bottles shattered around them, reminding Ryan all too much of the night he broke his Mom's prized possessions. "Then they pop out four loud, whining, _**piss machines**_ and expect you ta support 'em, like outta thin air, ya gotta work more an' slave more so that she can do nothin' but sit round an' let 'em suck on 'er till they's all fat an' content!"

Ryan understood with a sticky nauseating clarity, exactly what this was all about, and any pity he felt for the man quickly evaporated in an instant. He could barely stand to look at him anymore, but he could do nothing but let him finish talking. He had asked for answers, and he couldn't deny those answers now, just because he didn't like what he was hearing.

"They can't jus' fuckin' settle down an' leave ya be! Oh no… they gotta make sure th' _**whole town**_ knows that they's complet'ly miserable! Th' people ya grow up with… i's _**humiliating**_! They gotta d'mand more 'n more 'n more! 'Less ya show 'em that yu d'mand some fuckin' respect, then they won' ever _**shut up**_ wit' what they wan' to take from ya! You'll jus' let them take 'n take, till yu don' even r'spect yerself, then yer jus' a whipped lit'le pussy! I kept tryin' t' teach ya, but you nev'r learn'd! They gotta be _**shown**_ their place, otherwise they'll beat ya down 'till you've lost ev'rythin' ya got! They won't ev'r be happy u'less ya make 'em 'nderstan' that they oughta _**stay 'n their place**_!"

And then Ryan couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't take the monster he blindly called his father, insulting his mother or his sisters anymore. He couldn't hear the man victimizing himself and villainizing his family any more. So without thinking about the consequences, he made the two step stride over, and swung a punch at the drunk's jaw, knocking him back a foot or two.

He hadn't expected the quick response, or the sudden, harsh kick in the gut that threw him onto the floor, his back meeting a spray of shattered glass from the beer bottles. He didn't have time to react to the sharp pain in his back or the wind being rushed out of his body before Pete Decker was on his knees over him, punching the hell out of his face. All he could focus on for several moments was the flashes of pain that clouded his vision, then his vision suddenly refocused to see Esposito struggling to put the man into a rushed arm lock. He knew his partner well enough to guess what he was going to do next. It was just Esposito's style to shove his father up against the nearest wall. Usually the next move would be to slap the cuffs on whatever creep of the week they were up against.

As he rolled up from the glass slicked rug, he caught a glimpse of something by Pete Decker's thigh. The instant he recognized what it was, a single thought pounded through his head. _Oh shit! _Somehow, he hadn't noticed that the dry-as-woodshavings TV steak that had probably been nuked at least three times had been accompanied by a set of utensils; more specifically, a fork and a steak knife. Of course, the steak knife had wound up well within grabbing range.

"Javi, knife!" he called out to his partner a second early as he rushed to the two men.

Pete Decker broke free of Esposito's uncoordinated and rushed grip, and grabbed the knife, swinging it up to try and connect it with his partner's shoulder. Ryan didn't even think about it before he instinctively blocked the swing and twisted his father's wrist outward, forcing him to drop the knife and bringing him to the ground again. Esposito stood a pace behind him, almost frozen in shock before snapping out of it and kicking the steak knife away, into the other room.

Ryan just wanted all the fighting to stop. He had been trapped in it for most of his childhood, lost a sister to it, and had been haunted by it for so many years afterward. He was surrounded by it daily, and wore the vest daily so he could prevent any more of it. But in that moment, his friend had almost been hurt by the same monster that took his sister from him because of a fucking need for control, and he couldn't help the final burst of anger that roared up and made him crash his knee into the man's face, and the sickly twist of relief he got from the resonating crack that sounded. He had broken his father's nose.

Then, that perverse sense of enjoyment he got from the sound quickly evaporated, and he was left feeling disgusted at himself and resentful towards his father. He had been unnecessarily brutal, something that he had never wanted to become, because he was terrified of ending up like his father. Ignoring the hateful voice in his head telling him that his fear had been affirmed, he wrenched the man up from a kowtowing position and roughly shoved him back so he was sitting on the floor, slouched against the wall. The blazing fury in his normally cool, laid-back, blue eyes conveyed an unspoken command, telling Pete Decker not to get up. Blood leaked from his nose, but he barely paid attention to it.

"You kept us all trapped in that house for over twelve years. You beat Mom _**within an inch of her life**_ several times, and hospitalized her regularly. You terrified Beth so much that she couldn't participate in gym class because she flinched at the slightest things. You haunted Tessa's nightmares so that she could barely sleep… so that she _**still**_ has trouble getting to sleep before _**one in the morning**_. You left me to dry their tears when they couldn't understand why the Hell _**Daddy**_ always yelled and threw things. You fucking _**killed**_ Ashleigh, and then you made me bury her body. You destroyed us so that we never understood the real meaning of family," Ryan kept his voice low and refused to shout at the man, but venom poured out of every word that escaped through his clenched jaw. He was no longer afraid of the man. Just pissed off.

"Don't tell me you were the victim, because you weren't, and spare me your bullshit about them trying to take advantage of you, because they didn't. You demanded something that none of us could give and then blamed us when we inevitably failed to provide. She did everything she could to make you happy, no matter how miserable she was, and you punished her for it. You punished all of us for it," Ryan frowned deeper at the utterly defeated man slouched on the ground, and couldn't help but wonder how the invincible monster that he'd been so terrified of had become the pathetic, drunk man that practically lay in front of him. "I came here today to say that you're done. You're done terrorizing me, and Mom, and Tessa, and Beth, and our family. You can't touch them anymore because I won't let you. You can't hurt me anymore because you're not my father. You're nothing but Ash's killer,"

Ryan could've sighed in relief when the man didn't make any move to get up or fight back against him. Pete Decker just lay there glowering at him, with a sense of utter defeat. He was just about to leave when he saw out of the corner of his eye, Esposito pulling something else shiny out from his pockets. He turned to face his partner and recognized the object as a pair of handcuffs. He sighed because he knew exactly what was running through his partner's mind and how hard it would be for him to say his next words.

"Javi, no. We're not going to arrest him," he was so emotionally exhausted that he barely had the energy to say it. The words were heavy enough as is.

"Bro, there's no Statute of Limitations on murder. We could put him away for life; for your sister, for child abuse and domestic abuse, for assaulting an officer, and probably a dozen other charges. Make him pay for what he did to your family," Esposito was a devout believer in justice, and Ryan knew that it would be hard for his friend to just walk away. But he needed to. Ryan would beg if he had to, though not out of any sick loyalty to his father.

"I didn't come here today as a cop. Just me, looking for answers. If we arrest him now, then everything will be different," he could see the hesitance in his friend's eyes, and it broke his heart, because part of him wanted to see his father out of arm's reach of his family for the rest of his life. But he couldn't give in now. "Jav, please," he whispered, and finally, Esposito listened.

"Alright," he said in response, and Ryan could tell that it was just as much as a struggle for his partner as it was for himself.

Only then could Ryan pay attention to all the signals his body was sending. His face hurt, and he probably needed to get an ice pack on it soon. His back wasn't much better, and he was sure that he had been cut by at least some of the glass shards that he had been thrown on. Still, he ignored the pain for a bit longer so he could take one last look at the house he had grown up in.

Then finally, after twenty years, Ryan turned, and walked away from the house for good.

•••

It had been well over an hour by now, and Jenny was beyond terrified. Maybe these sorts of things were supposed to take that long, after all, she wasn't exactly well versed in abusive father-child confrontations, so she wasn't sure what she ought to expect.

For the thousandth time that hour, she glanced over to Kevin's gun on the bedside table. She couldn't imagine why the Hell she would ever need it. After all, Pete Decker didn't know she existed, so he probably wouldn't come after her any time soon. But she just let her fingers hover gingerly over the black metal of the barrel, as if afraid that touching the metal would make it fire.

She could easily turn on the television, and pretend to watch whatever channels she could get on the cheap motel cable. Of course, she knew that it was no use; she was a born worrier, and until Kevin was safely back in her arms, she wouldn't be able to distract herself from the situation at hand.

Then, for the millionth time in that hour, she cocked her head to the window on the right side of her bed, and gently brushed the dingy curtain to look towards the road that she knew her Kevin had walked down. Upon this inspection though, she was relieved to see two familiar figures walking up the dirt road. They looked slightly worse for the wear, but no permanent or serious damage had been done, and before she could stop herself, a cry of thankful joy escaped her mouth.

He was safe.

She wasted no time in snatching up her room key before racing out the door to meet the two men. In the back of her mind, she was aware that the corny movement seemed like every bad romance cliché that had ever come into being, as well as several World War Two movies that depicted the end of the war and the soldiers being sent home to their wives, but she couldn't bring herself to care. He was safe, and that was all that really mattered to her.

Jenny had been in Track and Field back in college, and tried to stay in shape still, so crossing the short distance was no problem, and within moments she wrapped herself around his warm body in a tight hug, as if to prove to herself that he really was okay. His face looked like it had sustained a serious beating, but she had grown up with an older brother, so she knew that it was nothing too serious. He really was safe.

The only thing that kept her from bursting into tears was the distinct knowledge that she might have to be the strong one again for his sake. She pressed a soft, but deeply loving kiss to his lips, trying to convey that he wasn't allowed to scare her like that again. She couldn't focus on anything but him. She could see him wince, and understood that he was hurt worse than what she could see, but not so badly that she needed to panic. She'd examine it when they got back up to the room. Until then, she couldn't focus on that; only one thought occupied her consciousness.

He was safe.

* * *

**Reading through this, I'm thinking this might be good as a last chapter, but part of me feels obligated to add an epilogue sort of thing. It's really entirely up to you! I'm in the dark about what to make for an epilogue, if you guys can offer up suggestions of things you might want to see, then maybe I'll use it!**

**Like I already said, I'm still on the fence about the entire epilogue thing, so I don't have the next chapter title for you, no matter how amazing you've all been with reviews. Maybe I'll get this last chapter out sooner. And if it takes me a while, (because Midterms are coming up next week) then I'll be sure to make it worth your wait!**

**Also, you know me, (and every other writer on this site) I love my feedback, so review and let me know what you thought of it! I'm not sure if I liked it, but I want to hear where you stand.**


	27. The Story With a New Ending

**It's been a long wait and I can't apologize enough for that, but it's finally hear! The long awaited epilogue to my Ryan-centric Castle fanfiction "Dredging Up the Past." It's been a really fun ride and I've adored all the reviews I've gotten from all of you about this story! This Fanfiction has helped me through a lot, and I hope that you guys have enjoyed it too. Now here's the part where I get all maudlin, so if you want to avoid that, you know where the story starts.**

**I've got to make a shout out to my original editor, who helped me map out this story: my little sister, Isabelle. I also need to shout out to Billy, who is more of my brother than anything that genetics says, and Anashya, simply for being who she is. I love all three of you more than anything.**

**As for all of you, I need to make a couple of reviewer shout-outs because some people have been simply incredible, and I've become friends with many of you. ****Runeaglerun, you were always the first one to review. Ten minutes after I update, I had your review, blowing me away with all the compliments you had. I loved all of our conversations. ****Shelipop, your energy for this story kept me enthusiastic and I always ended up blushing with pride whenever I heard from you. ****LishaChan, you were always ready with an opinion and I never knew what to expect from you, which meant I loved hearing from you. ****Lynneanne, if I considered anyone my cheerleader, it would be you. ****Chocopengi, you've stuck with me from beginning to end. Your loyalty is unwavering. ****Championship Vinyl my first regular reviewer, I'll miss hearing from you. ****Mrhyperbole, always willing to guess what might come next, and never getting frustrated with me over it. ****Tpchicken, thank you for critiquing my work when it needed it. ****Silvanelf, you were always asking to see how I was doing whenever I'd complain about whatever life was throwing at me, and you'd always leave fantastically long reviews. ****Caffine-Faerie, your heartfelt reviews always touched me, and amazed me that I could touch you so much. ****Seekerchick06, whenever you had something to say I always heard from you, and it was always fantastic advice. ****Macberly, I could always expect your enthusiastic reviews, and loved how you emphasized the important things by putting them in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. ****Tutorgirl, you started off as one of those people who would read but not review, but when you did start reviewing, not only did I hear from you regularly, but you also went back and reviewed many of the chapters you skipped the first time around. Not many people would do that. ****Zoe Milex, your compliments on my characterization always left me grinning. ****Tkaa, you came into this story late but you didn't let that slow you down, I loved reading your quirky and lively reviews. ****And thank you to everyone else who reviewed. I wish I could go down in the list and mention you all. Each one of your reviews meant the world to me.**

**Epilogue: The Story With a New Ending**

Esposito couldn't wait for the plane to land. They had only stayed in that motel for one night, but it was still a long one. Ryan hadn't wanted any help from the doctors in the nearby area because for some reason, he felt like letting the hospital take care of him would keep him stuck in that town, so he just asked Jenny and him to clean out his back and bandage him up.

Luckily, Esposito got some basic medical training from his time in the armed forces as well as in his police training, and as an elementary school teacher, Jenny had some basic knowledge of injuries too.

After they dealt with both his, and Ryan's mild injuries, Esposito knew enough to give his partner some space. The man needed to process what had happened, and probably needed Jenny, and not him. Still, he had an adjoining room in case.

The next morning they were packed up and headed back to the airport, where he returned the Hertz rent-a-car to someone who wasn't "Kyle," so there was no problem. Ryan had been strangely silent and introspective, and while he was mildly worried about his best friend and kept a close eye on him, Esposito knew that he probably still needed space to think. Things would be better once they got back east… back to the city.

He just wish he knew what was on his partner's mind.

He had been thoroughly shocked with how the confrontation had gone, even though he hadn't known what to expect, he could never have predicted the fight that took place, or those despicable words Ryan's father had said. It had taken everything in his power to keep himself from not only beating the crap out of that monster, but also slap the cuffs on him and bring him down to the police station for all of his crimes.

Esposito believed in the power of the law. He believed that those who break it should be forced to answer to a court, and accept whatever punishment they were given. He joined the armed forces when he was younger so he could fight for those beliefs, and then he became a cop so he could continue to do that. He found it near impossible to come face to face with someone who has not only broken the law in one of the most immoral ways, but also caused so much unnecessary damage to a good family, and not take them down.

As a personal ethical rule, Esposito kept his feelings out of his police-work so he could handle cases objectively and fairly. But deep down he was, by nature intensely protective of the people he cared about. If a case dug under his skin far enough, then he would drop his procedures immediately and let that protective instinct take over. When it came down to it, his family came first.

Pete Decker had overstepped both of those lines in Esposito's mind; he crossed the official line in one of the most severe legal offenses possible, and more importantly he had crossed the line where it became very personal for Esposito. He had hurt his best friend and destroyed the entire family. Those two combinations easily made Pete Decker the most contemptible man in the world in his mind. The thought that Ryan would ever let the creep walk free after all this time not having to suffer for his crimes was incomprehensible to him.

But Ryan needed him to, and like he said, his family came first. So reluctantly, he had turned and walked away. Because after all, in the end, it wasn't about Pete Decker, it was about Ryan.

And now he was sitting in an uncomfortable airplane chair, watching his partner as they flew back towards New York. Honeymilk must have been exhausted from all the worrying and taking care of her wounded boyfriend afterwards, because the moment the plane took off she had conked out on his partner's shoulder. Over an hour and a half later she still hadn't stirred. Ryan on the other hand, turned his head to look out the window, and hadn't moved an inch since.

For the thousandth time in the past several weeks, he had gotten the distinct feeling that speaking would interrupt some necessary personal moment in his friend's mind, so he found a painstakingly boring magazine to read until he enough time had passed that he felt comfortable enough to put it down. Since then, he had been keeping his eye on the two next to him, also deep in thought.

He hadn't saved Mark Hill in eleventh grade; some random, distracted kid who bumped into him was to thank for that. The first time his best friend was in danger, he had failed him by not noticing. To this day he still despised being in the dark about anything.

The second time his best friend was in danger, he had been purposely cut out of the loop, and because of that he let down his partner, Ike Thornton. He had let the little things go by unnoticed and unquestioned, and because of that he thought he had let his best friend die. Even though later things had been made right, that didn't change the fact that for three years he carried around the belief that Ike and Mark were the same thing, because he never learned from his goddamned mistakes, and coincidence didn't intervene twice.

Ryan had been assigned as his partner only weeks after Ike's supposed death. At that point he hadn't wanted a new partner, or a new best friend. With his track record, he thought that he would let them down again with the same goddamned mistake he always made, and the guy would die, or something terrible like that. For weeks he had been cold and distant to the guy, taking out much of his frustration on Ryan simply because he could. Nothing seemed to bother the guy, and he seemed too naïve to be very experienced. Even when he proved that he wasn't a rookie, Esposito was still harsh on Ryan for weeks. He would yell, he would be frank, he would criticize every little fault, he wouldn't ask for help, and he wouldn't invite him on road trips. He had been determined to not have a partner, regardless of the arrangements the Captain had made.

He had gotten so confrontational that Esposito overheard Beckett asking Ryan if he wanted a different partner. After all, Beckett had been teamed with Ryan before Esposito came along, and so her loyalties had been to the cop she knew. But despite all the abuse Esposito had poured on him, he still remembered the guy saying "He's just dealing with something. Besides, it's hard to trust a new partner right off. Even harder for him for some reason; give it time." After that point he began to warm up to the guy, and within the month they had become friends. Out of trust and a bit of guilt at his first impression, about a year later he told Ryan about Ike, and his partner replied with "I figured it was something around those lines," and then let the matter drop. All had clearly been forgiven long ago, and even though he didn't deserve it, he knew that was just how Ryan was.

By the time all of this rolled around, he had learned his lesson way too well to let anything fall through the cracks again. He had promised himself that he wasn't going to screw up and lose his best friend again. Not a third time, and not with Ryan. He couldn't afford to screw up one more time. So no matter how awkward it looked to be staring at his best friend for much longer than he ought to be, he didn't let up. Call it his overly protective instincts, but he wasn't going to let his best friend out of his sight until they were back in New York, or until he was completely assured that the guy was going to be alright. Whichever came first.

He was surprised when Ryan turned around to face him slowly, not wanting to wake his girlfriend. After an hour and a half of staring out the window, Esposito had been pretty assured that his partner wanted to keep his eyes on the ground until they were back in New York. Maybe out of an irrational fear that his father was somehow following him back East, maybe because he needed visual confirmation that he was in fact, getting away from that house for good, but whatever it was, he wouldn't have expected the guy to turn around and break eye contact with the clouds thirty minutes before landing. Luckily, Ryan didn't seem to be weirded out that his partner was staring at him; he even seemed to expect it. But that was Ryan's intuition for you, when it came to people, he just seemed to understand.

"I meant what I said you know," Ryan said without prompting. His voice took on that honest, heartfelt, comforting tone that practically defined his personality. "He can't do anything more to hurt me. I'm going to be okay; you don't need to worry anymore."

Once again, his partner had read my thoughts. "Can't help it, gotta make sure," he said with a grin to let Ryan know that he knew all of those things in his rational mind, and didn't doubt his friend's word, only the validity of the statements when applied to the real world. "Did someone leave a secret message encrypted in the clouds or something?"

Ryan let out a light chuckle at the joke. "Nah, it's just a little hard to believe that I'm really leaving that place behind for good. It's been haunting me for so long now."

Esposito nodded with understanding. Maybe one day he'd stop hanging Mark and Ike over his head, just like Pete Decker had been looming over Ryan for so long. Obviously, Pete cast a larger shadow than his past failures, but it was still a connection that he could relate to. "Well, it's really over."

"Not quite yet, it's not," Ryan replied thoughtfully, causing Esposito to look at him in curiosity. "You've been great this entire time Javi, but I need to ask if you could do me one last favor,"

•••

"The sign's a bit much, don't you think?" Lanie heard Kate taunting Castle, and she couldn't help but smirk, even through her fog of worry. They had been standing around the baggage claims at JFK for only twenty minutes, but that her impatience was driving her to the brink of insanity already.

"Okay once Ryan and Esposito get back, the five of us need to go on a quest to find your lost sense of humor," Castle countered back, "where do you think you misplaced it? Because this is funny,"

"It won't be so funny if something went wrong down there," Lanie paused her pacing to interve, bluntly stating what Kate was much too kind to say to Castle. Sometimes, the writer boy was much too naïve to be a murder mystery writer. "We haven't heard from them at all in the past two days. For all we know, one of them could be dead,"

"Lanie," Kate scolded her with shock evident in her voice. The M.E. knew that her friend was worrying about the same exact thing, but wasn't expecting her to voice it, let alone so harshly.

Next to the taller woman Castle visibly sagged as what she said sunk in, proving that the writer hadn't considered the possibility until now. Part of her wanted to feel guilty, but she was too worried about her boys getting home safely. She wasn't sure if Kate really understood that the morgue wasn't a separate world from the precincts where they worked. Just because she worked tons of cases with other teams that doesn't mean that they aren't her boys just as much as they are Kate's.

"What? It's the truth. Unless either of you spoke to them last night and conveniently forgot to mention it, one of them could very easily be dead. Hell, both of them could be dead for all we know! Someone might as well say it,"

"Lanie, stop it," Kate started to talk in that firm, yet sympathetic voice that she used with the families of the victims, but was cut off by an announcement over the speaker.

_ATTENTION. FLIGHT 7116 HAS BEEN DELAYED AND IS NOW SCHEDULED TO ARRIVE AT 11:21. ATTENTION. FLIGHT 7116 HAS BEEN DELAYED AND IS NOW SCHEDULED TO ARRIVE AT 11:21._

"Shit," Lanie swore loudly, pointedly ignoring the shocked looks she received from Kate and Castle. Without having to check, she knew from memory that Javier and Ryan are supposed to be on that flight. Impatiently she whipped out her phone, then swore again when the time only read 10:47. Her hands were shaking and she started to pace again, moving as fast as she could so she could have something to do.

"Lanie!" Kate finally shouted quietly and grabbed both of her hands to still her over-anxious fumbling. She looked up at her much taller friend to see confusion and worry in the woman's eyes. "We're all nervous but you need to calm down. If something had gone wrong then they would've called. The fact that we haven't heard from them is just more evidence that they're probably okay,"

The M.E suddenly had a new respect for her friend's job as a cop. She had to deal with hysterical people every week and calm them down. The words were soothing, if not for their optimistic outlook, then for the ring of truth that they probably held. If something had gone wrong, either of the boys would call Kate first, and if something happened to both of them, then Ryan's girlfriend would've made contact with her too.

Still, she could just picture them both in the emergency room, or their bodies in a ditch somewhere. She'd seen enough corpses to know what it would look like, and while she had overcome the horror factor in looking at dead and maimed bodies, she didn't think she'd be able to maintain that same composure if Ryan or Javier were the next corpses on her table.

"Right… sorry… yeah you're right," she said distantly, trying to dig herself out of the prison that her fears had encased her in. All the while, she put a great deal of effort not to look back at her best girl friend and the odd look that she was getting from her. Normally she prided herself on keeping a cool head and not letting things ruffle her up, and Kate knew this. She silently cursed at all of the downsides to having a cop for a best friend and tried not to think about why she was losing control now.

Actually, no. She wouldn't _allow _herself to think about it until she was back home and knew that her boys were safe.

"Yeah, I guess the sign is a little tacky and clichéd," Castle said with a sigh; his expression still hadn't recovered from the guilty burden of knowledge that she had forced on him. It reminded her a little too much of watching her niece find out that Santa Claus wasn't real. The first stab of real guilt hit her that she had caused the writer unnecessary worry. Seriously, if those eyes got any bigger then she could easily mistake him for a beagle puppy. How Kate had resisted him for three years was well beyond her.

"Nah, they'd like it," she finally said, hoping to make amends. Castle had gone out of his way to get a hold of one of those signs that limousine companies used to find their clients in the baggage claim areas. Instead of advertising the limo company though, he got a personalized one made by some online site. It was actually a dry erase board so it was reusable, and on it the word "Honeymilk" was written in all capital letters in what was probably Castle's neat, slanted scrawl.

After that, none of them could think of anything to say, so they stood in silence. After all, unless they wanted to work each other up into a panic over the what-if's, then there was nothing that hadn't already been said, or that was appropriate for the situation.

It felt as if Lanie waited for as long as she possibly could between each check of the clock, but time moved so slowly that only minutes slipped past between glances. One time it would be two, the next maybe three, and then the third time it would just be one. She was sure that she would drive herself to the brink of insanity before their flight came in, and that was assuming that they were on the flight they planned to take in the first place. They could've easily missed their flight, or they could still be back in Ryan's hometown, either recovering from the encounter, or in a hospital. Anything was possible, and she didn't know how long she could wait.

Sure, she was patient when she had a body on the table, but that was because she always had some procedure to run or some tests to administer to the body and evidence. Having her hands full made all the difference. In actuality, she was an incredibly impatient person, and when she had to sit and wait for something she would need something to distract her.

Finally, she glanced up at the board, and flight 7116's status had changed from "Delayed" to "Landed." Logically, she knew that she would still have to wait another ten to fifteen minutes for them to actually make their way to the baggage claim, but that didn't stop her from jumping up at the new information.

"They've landed," she announced without consciously deciding to speak. She noticed that both Kate and Castle had reacted similarly, straightening their postures and glancing to the status board before looking towards the doors.

Slow but steady streams of people leaked from those double doors almost constantly, and Lanie analyzed each person who crossed the threshold, hoping to see her boys coming through. She wasn't sure if the airplanes all came in at the perfect time so that there would never be an end to the flow, or if it was just like that today, but she couldn't be bothered. Until she knew that they were all safe, then she wouldn't be able to care about much else.

When the conveyor belt for flight 7116 started moving, and depositing bags to the slow crowds, she began to get nervous again. The crowd around the baggage claim was starting to thicken considerably. Where were they?

When she finally spotted the grinning Hispanic cop and his Irish partner, she was sure that she had never been so relieved to see that worn out leather jacket in her entire life. He was carrying a worn out leather backpack that probably held everything he brought with him, and next to him, Ryan looked about the same. Ryan sported a few of bad bruises, and Javier also had a couple of bumps to his name. The only person without any apparent injuries was Jenny, but Lanie assumed that it was because she hadn't faced Ryan's father with the boys. Ryan had an arm wrapped around his girlfriend's waist and a tense expression set on his face. When they noticed the welcoming committee however, they all seemed to relax into warm smiles.

Lanie only focused on Javier's wide grin.

"I'm never living down that nickname, am I?" Ryan asked with full knowledge of the answer, a relaxed smile was on his face.

"Not in this lifetime," Castle replied with a matching smile.

Hugs were exchanged between everyone, but Lanie paid little attention, still. Javier stayed off to the side; he knew that this was Ryan's time and didn't impede on that. While Lanie also wanted to show the Detective her support, her eyes were immediately drawn to his partner, keeping quiet. Without speaking, she breached the boundary that work put up, and wrapped him in a hug.

She was much smaller than he was, and fit perfectly into his tight embrace. She could tell that he was lost in the depths of his mind, and tried to put as much comfort into the contact as she could express. He seemed to understand what she was trying to do, as he squeezed her waist tighter to him and rested his forehead on her shoulder, very close to the crook of her neck. On her part, she held him just as tightly to convince herself that this was real, and that he was really safe.

Lanie recognized the signs; she knew that after particularly stressful and close-call cases, most cops needed to de-stress and reaffirm that they were actually alive, usually through a lot of contact comfort and desperate searching for peace. Those officers in relationships usually rushed home to find that reassurance in loved ones, and she could guiltily admit that in the past, she had run into a couple of cops who found their contact comfort in her. Though she hadn't actually violated the strictly plutonic coworker relationship with anyone in several years, she remembered the fast, desperate clutching of skin that always occurred to prove to the men that they had survived.

But Javier…

Detective Esposito was her friend. She was closer to him than she had ever been with those one-night flings with other cops. She knew his name, she saw him daily, and they talked outside of the job with some regularity. Regardless of how she found herself not minding the prospect of reaffirming Javier's safety to the both of them, she knew that it had to stay within the boundaries of friendship. She couldn't destroy that.

Still, there was no harm in allowing the hug to continue. He needed that much, probably more than she needed it to make sure that he was safe. This only further convinced Lanie that something bad had happened during this confrontation; something had really scared him that she could only guess at. The prospect terrified her, because even after the Racine case, he had never reacted with that much of an empty desperation. He had been mournful and confused, but never this hollow shell.

She was relieved that everyone was too focused with finding and retrieving all of their bags from the conveyor belt to notice this moment between Javier and her. She wasn't sure what they would say to comment on the abnormality of it, and she was even more uncertain as to what she would say in response. Her arms clung urgently to his shoulders and his were tightly wound around her waist, his hands lying on her back. No matter what the height difference was between them, neither seemed to mind how Javier simply curled around her in both a protective manner, and a terrified attempt to hide away from the world.

Lanie was overwhelmed by his presence, but hardly minded. For some unexplained reason, she needed this too. She needed to be able to feel him, to make sure that he was alive and his heart was still beating, and that he was safe from this unknown menace.

"Want to talk later?" she whispered to him in a barely noticeable breath. She knew him well enough by now, and she needed to know what happened.

"I'll pay for the drinks," he shot back quietly, and she could feel his mouth morphing into a grateful smile as it pressed to her shoulder.

"You always do," she replied with a mild smirk on her face and then loosened her hold on him. Thankfully, he understood the message she was trying to relay to him and untangled himself from her arms. They both knew that if the interaction lasted much longer that the others would start to get nosy and begin jumping to incorrect conclusions.

•••

"We just hit the city," Esposito announced to his partner.

Ryan couldn't help but be a jittery pile of nerves in his seat. After all, this was the very last thing he had to do, and it was the one thing he had dedicated his entire childhood to avoiding. But things had changed, and now he had to let those impulses go. That didn't make his job any easier, but he desperately tried not to dwell on it until he had to.

To distract himself from the oncoming task, he glanced over to Esposito in the driver's seat of the car. For some reason, Esposito was always the one in the driver's seat of the Junk Bucket. He was sure that it was because he was the one at the wheel when the car broke down in that Connecticut town. When he reflected on it, he actually didn't remember driving since that day, but he didn't mind it so much.

It had been a couple of days since they got back, and already he was asking for another day off from work. He was afraid of how badly his paycheck would suffer for all of the late mornings and personal days, but knew that the team understood his need for the time. Hopefully this would be the last day he'd need off for a long time. He knew that his partner was worried about him, and while the guy had every right to be concerned, Ryan hated that Esposito felt the need to check up on him so often.

Unlike everyone else, he had noticed that moment between his partner and the M.E. at the airport. Though he didn't know the full extent of their relationship, Ryan had been aware for a while that there was something more that they weren't telling the group. They weren't involved yet, otherwise the two wouldn't have been so careless at the airport, but Ryan had the feeling that there was something more than what they let show. Maybe something more than even they knew about.

After all, every one of them had fallen victim to the post-case shock and mild trauma from difficult cases. Either you get shot, you nearly watch your partner get shot, the case is a horrifying one, it hits too close to home, or the absolute worst in people is brought out. Whatever it is, it leaves every cop needing to confirm that they survived and that things will be okay. It was clear to Ryan that his partner had also undergone some pretty bad repercussions from the confrontation, and he had a feeling that Lanie had helped him overcome it.

"So, what's up between you and Lanie?"

Esposito's reaction was enough for Ryan to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Heavy confusion, mixed with worry, mild guilt, embarrassment, and surprised jumped onto the man's face, and as quickly as he saw it, his partner tried to disguise it too late.

"What d'you mean, bro?" he pulled the clueless card out, but Ryan was neither surprised nor insulted by the avoidance maneuver. Lanie was not only a mutual coworker, but she also entrusted some semblance of confidentiality to his partner. Combined, things could be awkward, and his partner's reaction was enough to prove that the guy was aware of that.

Out of consideration, Ryan resisted the urge to further analyze his partner's reaction by focusing devoutly on the road ahead of them. He was aware that Esposito would do the same for some attempt at self-preservation. From past experience, he knew that neither of them liked being treated as a suspect in the box. The only way they got anything out of each other was giving them breathing room.

"That little reunion at the airport," Ryan elaborated with an amused lilt in his voice. "You really think that I wouldn't notice?"

Ryan heard a soft mumble that sounded mildly like "I'd hoped not," but chose to ignore it. He knew his best friend would tell him what he wanted to tell him in his own time, and prompting would only slow the process. When it came to Esposito, words came easily and quickly, but if he said the first thing that came to mind before filtering it in his head first, especially when he was under pressure, then it would often end up being the wrong thing to say. For the important stuff, it was best to let the guy take time to figure out what exactly he ought to say.

"We're… friends," the Hispanic man spoke slowly, slowly tasting the words on his lips before letting them fully escape his mouth. "Sometimes we hang out: go for a beer after work, like we do."]

"How long has this been going on?" Ryan asked with genuine curiosity. He was equally as curious to know if his partner really understood how deep the relationship was. There was still more unsaid, and he wasn't sure if Esposito was consciously aware of it too.

"A couple of years," Esposito replied lightly, as if not really thinking about the words. "Maybe a couple of months before Castle joined up."

Ryan felt his eyebrows practically leap off of his face in his surprise. He would've guessed a couple of months at the absolute most. The fact that this had been going on for a couple of years without him knowing – without his best friend telling him – was practically inconceivable. He wanted so badly to cut in and ask Esposito to elaborate about how it started and why he'd never been told, but kept himself from replying. The guy would either explain on his own time, or he wouldn't be ready to.

"After the Keyes case Beckett had invited all of us out for a drink, remember? While you idiotically roped yourself into a drinking contest with Beckett, Lanie and I got to talking and she asked me how the case had played out,"

"She wasn't told?" Ryan couldn't catch himself before that interruption sprung out; the surprise overtook him for a minute. He had never thought that the medical examiners didn't hear the ends of cases; it just seemed like a necessary piece of information that allowed everyone to move on with their lives. He couldn't imagine being able to just jump cases without some resolution.

"That's what I asked. Apparently, no one thinks to finish the story for the M.E.'s," Esposito replied, barely fazed by Ryan's uncontrolled outburst. "That night, she asked if I could let her know the outcome of the cases if I had the time, and I said I would. Since then I texted or called her at the end of cases to fill her in, or we'd meet up at a bar if it was a difficult one. You know how explaining what happened sometimes helps figure it out yourself? It's like that, nothing more."

Ryan thought about what his partner had said, and he couldn't help the grin that wormed its way onto his face. Esposito had one of the biggest soft, protective sides in the world, but he was very good at keeping it buried under work protocol and tough exteriors. When it did show through, it usually manifested itself as nurturing, protective habits towards defending the people he cared about.

Still, he couldn't help but disagree with his partner. There was no way that moment he witnessed at the airport could possibly fit the awkward friendship and "nothing more" that Esposito had described. There was more subtext that had yet to be addressed, and out of consideration for his friend and the realization that needed to come in its own time, Ryan didn't disillusion the guy about how much "more" there actually was.

"We're here,"

And with those two words, the Irish cop suddenly stopped reflecting on his oblivious partner and the equally oblivious medical examiner he fancied, and his focus shifted back to the objective in front of him. Esposito carefully parked the car in one of the visitor spots in the building's lot and Ryan waited until the last possible second – once the car was off and the key was out of the ignition – before he unbuckled himself and opened the door.

In some ways, this would be even harder than confronting his father had been. He wasn't facing the enemy this time. Quite the opposite, he was now dealing with many of the people he cared about most in the world, and he was terrified. Afraid of how they would react, afraid of who else would be there to hear, afraid of what they would think of him, and afraid of their memories.

The short elevator ride and walk to the desired door was blurry and automatic. Ryan didn't need to think about how to get to apartment 437 nor did he need to dedicate any of his senses to actively navigating his way, so his entire consciousness focused on what he would say.

His partner seemed to pick up on the fact that he was operating on auto-pilot, and once they reached the right door Esposito took the liberty of knocking for him. Distantly, he was aware that he would need to thank his partner for all he'd done to help him, but couldn't do anything at the moment.

The moment the door opened, he snapped himself out of the distant stupor and back into the real world. A warm smile stretched across his face as he moved to greet the woman at the door.

"Hey Mom," he said affectionately before wrapping the woman a couple of inches shorter than him into a quick hug. He felt a bit guilty for how long it had been since he had last visited his mother here in Boston, and mentally made a promise to put aside more time to visit.

"Kevin, Javier, it's wonderful to see you again! Come in." she ushered them inside warmly, and Ryan sighed uneasily.

One glance into the living room told him all he needed to know. Everyone was already seated on the couch, talking lightly to one another. Beth was seated in the light green armchair in her quiet and unobtrusive manner, making light conversation with Tessa and her girlfriend, Liz. In contrast to the very Irish features in his family, Liz stood out as an anomaly as much as Esposito did. Instead of the pale skin, blue eyes, and dark hair that Ryan, Tessa, and their mother exhibited, and the darker eyes that Beth sported, Liz's tanned skin and curly, dirty blond hair stood out.

Every now and then, Ryan couldn't help but wonder if their Dad's horrible treatment had any influence on Tessa's sexual preferences, but more often than not, he figured it didn't. Either way, it didn't matter to him because Tessa was happy in a committed relationship with someone who loved her very much. Beth was a different matter, however. Even though she had the fewest memories of their time with Pete Decker, he knew for a fact that her quiet and invisible demeanor was due almost completely to their Father's angry outbursts. Ryan had guessed as much when he was little, and the dodgeball fiasco merely solidified his confidence in the theory. His second sister was nervous and shy around anyone she didn't know incredibly well, and had trouble getting to know new people. She didn't trust easily and thanks to that unfortunate problem, as well as many others, had trouble beginning or sustaining any semblance of a stable relationship. Secretly Ryan worried if she'd ever overcome her fear of getting hurt by people enough to find someone.

Unfortunately, his Mom followed Beth's struggling path. When they first ran away from Pete, he had understood that his Mother needed time to adjust to being free from an abusive relationship, but the longer they had spent in Boston, the more he became worried when he Mother hadn't found anyone new. He had been a mature kid, and the parental figure for all three of them, despite the fact that he was barely a teenager at the time, and he knew that it wasn't good for a thirty five year old woman to be completely unable to start a relationship, serious or otherwise. Twenty years later, he had come to accept that his Mother didn't want to give up her independence, but he was still concerned about his twenty seven year old sister who was having a similar problem. He hoped that one day she'd meet someone who illegitimized her fears, because Beth so deserved to find that happiness.

When the three women saw that they had arrived, the pleasant chatter had died out and gestured to the seat on the couch. Uncomfortably, Ryan shifted his weight from one foot to the other before dragging the green ottoman away from its traditional place near the armchair and sitting precariously on the edge of it so that he was facing both of his sisters and Liz.

"What'd you call us all here for, Kev?" Tessa asked lightly.

He had talked to his Mom briefly about what he had called all of them for a few days prior over the phone, and so she sat down in the spot on the couch that Ryan had rejected with a solemn, stoic, and mildly sad face on. Ryan was sure that his own expression matched his mother's. In the end, there was no way to determine whose face tipped his sisters off about the serious nature of the discussion, but his lack of an answer was the final determining factor that took the grins off of their faces.

Esposito respectfully remained standing several feet away from the small family circle, knowing not to intrude on the sad explanation that was about to occur. He understood that he was only there for moral support, and that it was a family matter above all else. For the millionth time in those past few months, Ryan was grateful for his partner's understanding and support.

"What?" Beth asked with a hint of concern lacing her voice now. The little crinkle that appeared between her eyebrows when she gets upset made itself pronounced.

He couldn't help but wonder about whether or not either of his sisters ever thought about their early childhoods. Maybe it bothers Tessa that her life didn't make sense, and maybe she doesn't understand why the first nine years of her life are so vague and choppy in her memories. Maybe Beth realized one day that she has no idea why they moved, or why they never visited their father. Maybe Liz asked Tessa if Ash's "kidnapper" ever slipped them a ransom note and when she replied with a negative, she wondered why. Maybe someone asked Beth why she flinches so easily and she got frustrated when she couldn't answer.

Then again, maybe it never bothered them, and they never thought about it. Maybe the past never haunted them the way it tormented him and his mother.

They would cry, and they would ask why they barely remember those years, why they don't remember the abuse, only a bit of yelling. Beth would wrap her arms around her stomach as she cried silently, never daring to breach her self-contained limitations. Tessa would sob openly and Liz would wrap her arms around her and trace spirals on her back while whispering comforting shushing sounds until she stopped bawling and ended up falling into an exhausted sleep in her lap. His Mom would look down at the floor in shame, and would refuse to cry until everyone left, when she would cry until she too, passed out.

He would try to comfort them, probably rubbing his Mom's back in hopes that she'd look up at them. He'd slowly and carefully pull Beth into a hug and tell her that it's okay to really cry, but she wouldn't return the hug, just bury herself into his shoulder for a few minutes, then pull away to continue to cry for herself.

They'd carry it around with guilt, confusion, grief, shame, and sorrow for months, trying to figure out how they had lived so long without those answers. They'd mourn deeply and maybe some of their memories would come back, in which case they'd cry over those memories of what they had lost, what they had forgotten, and why they had forgotten. It will seem too overwhelming for the longest time, and incomprehensible that they had forgotten. Then one day they'll learn how to bear the burdens of their past, no matter how impossible it seemed to be. And one more day far off in the future (though he's not sure how far away) they'll blink and realize that it's simply become a part of their life. Something they've come to accept.

But for today, he was about to destroy them. He'd survived through the first twelve years of his life solely because he had a purpose that he couldn't abandon. He had existed solely to protect his three sisters and his mother from getting hurt by their father. After enough time, the only way to do that was to convince his Mom to escape with them. Even after Ashleigh's death, when he'd failed in the only job that he identified as his own, he still struggled to keep protecting his family, this time from both their father and the truth. He lived exclusively so he could help them heal and rebuild their lives as normal children, and normal children didn't have to deal with the murder of their sister at their father's hand. So he had kept the dark secret to himself, and didn't allow himself to be weak because his sister's and Mother still needed him to be strong. He built a life around caring for them until they were old enough to support themselves, and then he built a career around helping others and stopping the bad guys. His entire life had been protecting others from further pain, and now he had to cause it.

Every impulse in his body was geared towards protecting them from the hideous truth, but then he thought of Beckett. He remembered how she lived each day with the painful knowledge that there was this monstrous, black void in her life that had no way of healing because she didn't have the closure of knowing who killed her Mother. What Beckett wouldn't give to put those demons of her past to rest; what injustice he would be doing to his sisters to keep their demons alive.

No matter how much pain he caused, they couldn't go on not knowing what happened to their baby sister. One day the scars would settle and the pain would dwindle away until the ache was faded and bearable. Today would not be that day, but if he didn't tell them now, the scars could never properly heal.

"It's about Ashleigh," Ryan finally began with a sigh. "It's time you knew the truth."

* * *

**Wow, now it's really over! That's so inconcievable to me. I'm going to miss this story a lot! If you enjoyed it, I'd love to hear from you one last time so you can tell me what you thought of my conclusion, if the writing got better or worse over the course of the story, and of course, how you think I did. If anyone read this but didn't review I'd love to hear from you too, and for those that did, I'll be looking forward to hearing from you again. I really hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did.**

**I already put this quote up earlier on in the story, but I think that it feels right to put it up as a parting message to all of you. Take it to heart as you live your life and search for those people worthy of becoming part of your family.**

**"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof." -Richard Bach**


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